It’s been more than 700 days since OpenAI debuted its viral chatbot ChatGPT, unofficially ushering in the age of AI and the competition from companies to harness it.
First, a period of experimentation with corporate customers began. They experimented with AI in a limited way. We incorporated early technology into some of our internal tools to see what worked and what didn’t. And recently, companies have become more serious and confident. They increased their investment in AI and put it at the center of their operations.
“2023 was truly the year that industries and businesses got serious about AI,” said James Dyett, Head of Platform Sales at OpenAI. “2024 is the year when our technology begins to be fully implemented.”
on wednesday, luck announced its second annual Fortune 50 AI Innovators list, highlighting the AI companies leading this new phase of technology adoption. They are the vendor with the most attention in terms of funding, customers, etc., and whose AI is considered best in class.
In addition to OpenAI, other Big Tech companies on the list include Microsoft, chipmaker Nvidia, business software company Salesforce, and Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. The startups include voice cloning technology company ElevenLabs, French AI chatbot startup Mistral, China-based AI company Modelvest, and biotech company Zyra Therapeutics, all of which are less than three years old.
Of course, AI is still in its infancy and the industry hierarchy remains very fluid. Top companies currently face many challenges, including the high cost of training models and the difficulty of attracting enough paying customers to make a profit. At the same time, the industry is full of startups doing the same thing, often with little difference in the products they sell. No matter how you look at it, selection is inevitable.
From the basics of AI to big dreams
So far, companies implementing AI have focused on improving employee productivity, such as helping software developers write code or handling customer service questions, thereby reducing the number of calls that customer support desks have to field.
Such adjustments may slightly improve business operations. But Eric Boyd, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Azure AI platform, says executives should dream bigger.
“You’re probably missing out,” Boyd warns, adding that enterprise customers should consider completely changing the way they do business.
Of course, Microsoft is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI boom. The company’s AI-related revenue will soon reach $10 billion annually, making the business unit the fastest in the company’s history to reach that milestone.
In general, corporate partnerships between AI vendors and enterprise customers exploded in 2024, including OpenAI’s agreements with biotech company Moderna and financial giant Morgan Stanley. Similar deals boosted OpenAI’s valuation to $157 billion, and it recently raised $6.6 billion in a major funding round in October, nearly doubling the company’s valuation from nine months ago.
Over the past year, we’ve seen a steady stream of new large-scale AI models being announced by OpenAI, including the preview release of o1, which touts powerful “inference” capabilities. Meanwhile, Meta introduced three versions of its open source language model in 2024, up from two versions the previous year. The use of many such basic models is rapidly increasing.
“The number of downloads has reached 500 million, which is 10 times more than last year,” said Ahmad Aldar, vice president and head of genAI at Meta. “We’ve seen incredible adoption of Llama in Fortune 500 companies for internal use cases,” he said, naming Meta’s large-scale language model.
Can AI help healthcare providers treat the condition?
Healthcare is one area that could particularly benefit from AI, especially given its reputation for high costs, administrative complexity, staffing shortages, and clinician burnout. According to consulting firm McKinsey & Co., AI could create $370 billion in value for healthcare by accelerating drug discovery and development and more accurately matching patients with potential treatments.
Xaira Therapeutics is one of the emerging AI-focused drug development startups. The company emerged in April with $1 billion in funding and has since launched initial efforts to develop new drug treatments, opened an office in South San Francisco and made key hires, including hiring a chief scientific officer.
The startup aims to apply generative AI to drug discovery, production, and clinical trials to improve the entire drug development process and bring more effective treatments to market faster.
“We believe AI can transform the way we perform all three steps to achieve greater success,” said Marc Tessier-Lavigne, CEO of Xaira Therapeutics.
Abridge, which helps doctors save time by automatically transcribing and organizing patient conversations, announced a $150 million Series C investment in February. The company also said new contracts are progressing at a steady pace, including with Yale-New Haven Health System and the University of Vermont Health Network.
“Our opportunity is to really ease the burden on clinicians and help them focus on the most important person in the room: the patient,” said Shiv Rao, CEO and founder of Abridge and a practicing cardiologist.
He cites research showing that doctors are overwhelmed and many are even considering leaving the field altogether. Rural hospitals, already at risk of closure due to financial constraints, will be particularly affected by this exodus.
Rao said the value of Abridge is that it is a sector-specific AI application specifically trained on medical and patient data and is intended to serve multiple markets across different parts of the health system, from large academic medical centers to private practices, including cardiology, primary care, and emergency rooms. This year, Abridge, in collaboration with the Mayo Clinic and software provider Epic, announced an AI documentation product aimed specifically at nurses.
Rao said winning a deal requires pitching well to three executives: the chief medical information officer, the chief information officer and the chief financial officer. “All three of us need to believe that this will provide an ROI for the clinician,” Rao says.
AI is Hollywood’s new star and villain at the same time
AI is bringing new opportunities to creative industries, but it also brings thorny issues, including copyright protection, potential threats to artists’ livelihoods, and major changes to art, film, design, and advertising. Runway, an AI video company that released its latest model in June that can create 10-second video clips from text prompts, says in its pitch that AI can speed up video projects and give creators more time.
“Film is an art form thanks to technology,” says Runway CEO and co-founder Cristóbal Valenzuela. “These are just tools.”
Runway is working with major film studios, including Lionsgate, following a partnership it signed in September. The deal includes the creation and training of a new customized AI model based on the entertainment company’s proprietary catalog. hunger games and Saw movie series.
Meanwhile, Adobe’s Firefly AI image generation tool has been used by customers to create more than 13 billion images. Clients use the technology, for example, to create images for Barbie packaging and customizable bottles sold by Gatorade.
“We’re excited to see these companies use gen AI in the real world, not only to make their creative departments’ lives easier, but also, in some cases, to help customers personalize and change their interactions with brands,” said Alexandru Costin, vice president of generative AI at Adobe.
Adobe recently announced generative AI video tools and the ability for artists to draw shapes and Adobe Illustrator to fill in images via text prompts. Adobe emphasizes that the AI it generates is only trained on data that it has the rights to use or that is in the public domain, and therefore does not violate copyright laws.
Overall, Mehta says use cases that seemed impossible before the current AI boom are now becoming reality as AI models become smarter. Customers currently using Llama include Accenture, which built a custom LLM to more efficiently produce ESG reporting for its consulting clients. Additionally, telecommunications giant AT&T used a tweaked version of the Llama model to improve response times to customer inquiries.
Microsoft’s Boyd says that while more than 60,000 customers are now using Azure AI, many executives are still thinking about how to use AI responsibly and ethically, how to manage data, and seek ROI. “Our focus has been on how we can help our customers take advantage of this new technology that impacts every aspect of their business,” Boyd asks.
OpenAI’s Dyett says it’s unclear what’s going to be the next big thing in AI, since most of the fundamentals are solved. But anyone looking to take technology to the next level has to take some risks. “This is going to be a company that’s bold enough to try and experiment with things that haven’t been done before and start to see really positive results that will drive other markets,” Diet said.
