If You Invested $1,000 In AI Stock (C3.ai Inc) When ChatGPT Launched, Here's How Much You'd Have Now

Leading artificial intelligence company OpenAI launched the ChatGPT chatbot and kicked off an increase in interest and valuations for artificial intelligence stocks.

One artificial intelligence stock, which also finds itself with a very fortunate ticker, is among the top-performing stocks in 2023.

What Happened: The launch of ChatGPT saw huge demand, breaking then records for signups. The launch also led to an additional $10 billion investment by Microsoft Corp MSFT, which had previously invested in the company in 2019 and 2021.

“In this next phase of our partnership, developers and organizations across industries will have access to the best AI infrastructure, models, and toolchain with Azure to build and run their applications,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told Bloomberg at the time.

The launch of ChatGPT and subsequent investment by Microsoft helped increase valuations of semiconductor stocks such as Nvidia Corp. and smaller companies that specialized in artificial intelligence, particularly those with AI in their name and/or ticker.

C3.ai Inc AI went public in December 2020 and has been among the leading pure-play AI stocks mentioned during the current rally in 2023. The company is a leading enterprise AI software provider that builds enterprise-scale AI applications.

The company reported $266.8 million in revenue in the last fiscal year, with $230.4 million coming from subscription revenue. C3.ai closed 126 deals in the last fiscal year.

The company said the market for enterprise AI applications is growing faster than predicted.

“As the enterprise AI market develops, it appears that the bulk of the demand is increasingly for turnkey enterprise AI applications, rather than development tools,” the company said.

The company highlighted a strong pipeline of deals through partners like Google Cloud and AWS.

C3 AI is projected to hit profitability by the end of fiscal year 2024.

“I believe we now have broad consensus that the addressable market for Enterprise AI is extraordinarily large and rapidly growing,” C3 AI CEO Thomas Siebel said.

The company lists an addressable market size of $791.5 billion in its earnings presentation.

“We are well positioned to accelerate growth, gain market share, attain sustainable non-GAAP profitability, and establish a market-leading position globally in enterprise AI. FY 2024 will be exciting.”

As investors continue to look toward AI stocks, C3 has increased in popularity. The stock was the fifth most searched ticker on Benzinga Pro in the first half of 2023 and ranked as the fifth most searched ticker in the second quarter. This came after the company previously didn’t rank in the top 20 in searches in the first quarter of 2023 or in 2022.

Related Link: AI Stocks Surge But Do Investors Trust AI With Financial Decisions? New Poll Provides Answer 

Investing $1,000 in AI Stock: C3.ai has been a top performer since ChatGPT was launched.

On Dec. 1, 2022, the day after ChatGPT went live, AI shares opened for trading at $12.93. A $1,000 investment could have purchased 77.34 shares at the time.

The $1,000 investment would be worth $3,114.48 today, based on a price of $40.27 for C3.ai shares at the time of writing. This represents a return of 211.4%.

Over the same time period, C3.ai shares have outperformed both Microsoft and the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY, which tracks the S&P 500.

The same $1,000 investment in Microsoft would be worth $1,328.40 today, representing a return of 32.8% over the same time period.

A $1,000 investment in the SPY over the same time period would be worth $1,091.05 today, representing a return of 9.1%.

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