Google's AI Stumbles: Altimeter Capital Expresses Disappointment Over Bard

Brad Gerstner the CEO and Founder of Altimeter Capital, a fund with more than $15 billion in assets under management, joined CNBC Monday and said that the fund is selling shares of Alphabet Inc GOOG GOOGL. Gertsner said that Google’s product velocity has been slowing down, and he's worried about the company falling behind in terms of artificial intelligence technology. 

Like many other investors, Gerstner has been less than impressed with Google’s response to Microsoft Inc’s MSFT use of OpenAI's ChatGPT, an AI chatbot/search engine. Google released “Bard” which has not been as popular with users as ChatGPT.

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“Their response in Bard fell flat,” Gerstner said. “And I frankly think that ChatGPT is accelerating their lead and not the other way around.”

Google’s stock took a sharp nosedive when the company rolled out Bard, after Bard made repetitive errors and seemed unfinished and clunky compared to ChatGPT. In fact, in early February following Bard’s rollout, Google’s stock lost more than $100 billion in market cap. For Gerstner, Google has lost its leading edge in terms of technology. 

Gerstner also points out that Google acquired Deepmind, an AI-focused company, in 2014 and was in a prime position to be a leader in AI. But, according to Gerstner, Google slowed down and allowed other companies to catch up in terms of AI. 

Price Action: Google’s stock was up 0.24% at $108.48 a share. The stock is up more than 20% YTD.

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