It seems that every day news of an exciting development in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) arrives. The latest buzz surrounds a song featuring machine-cloned voices of Drake and The Weeknd that went viral in hours. It’s little wonder that investor interest in AI stocks is booming.
UK share investors in particular are being energised by the fast-growing tech sector. According to investing platform eToro, the number of people trading in AI companies rocketed at the start of 2023.
The number of British investors opening new positions in AI-related stocks jumped 54% quarter-on-quarter between January and March, eToro says.
“A trillion dollar industry”
It’s not just younger stock pickers who are piling into the AI boom either. Apparently, “older users are also displaying a desire to become early investors in what is being tipped to be a trillion dollar industry”.
Ben Laidler, global markets strategist at eToro, notes that “the concept of artificial intelligence is not new for a lot of people.” But he adds that “until now, the idea of having a life-like conversation with a computer, having it write your emails or compose music seemed like something in the distant future.“
Laidler notes that the publicity of firms such as ChatGPT architect OpenAI “have offered a glimpse of the enormous potential of this still nascent technology.”
A top AI stock on my radar
UK investors using eToro’s platform have been buying IT services giants like Microsoft and Alphabet as well as smaller specialist AI stocks to capitalise on the machine thinking revolution. This is shown in the table below.
| Stock | Growth in opened positions in Q1 vs prior quarter (UK investors) |
| C3.ai | 9,384% |
| Nvidia | 72% |
| Intel | 48% |
| Alphabet | 39% |
| Microsoft | 24% |
| SentinelOne | 15% |
| Advanced Micro Devices | 10% |
| Upstart Holdings | 4% |
| Palantir Technologies | 2% |
But investors don’t necessarily need to hunt for US stocks to capitalise on the AI revolution. The London Stock Exchange also offers a range of top AI-related shares to buy.
Take Kainos Group (LSE: KNOS) for example. This UK share offers a spectrum of services that use machine thinking, including machine learning, fraud detection and fault identification. And it offers them across a broad range of industries including financial services, healthcare and education.
This provides the group with access to fast-growing industries while also spreading risk. Latest financials showed revenues soar 26% in the six months to September.
I’m also attracted to Kainos because of the rate at which its international business is growing. Overseas sales leapt 53% during the six-month period and now account for a third of the group total.
Sure, Kainos lacks the big development budgets of some of the industry’s big hitters like Microsoft. But the pace at which it’s making progress in the fast-growing AI sector still makes it a top stock to consider, in my opinion.
