TechCheck's inaugural AI scorecard
Speakers
Deirdre Bosa
— Anchor/Reporter, CNBC Tech Check
Summary
CNBC's Deirdre Bosa introduces TechCheck's inaugural AI scorecard for major public AI companies, using spending, adoption, financial performance, and market reaction. Alphabet ranks first by a wide margin, Meta second, Amazon and Microsoft in the middle, and Apple last. She notes private AI players are important but lack comparable data, and says the scorecard is a baseline for tracking narrative, spending, and demand into earnings.
- Deirdre Bosa presents TechCheck's first AI scorecard for public AI companies.
- The scorecard weights spending, adoption, financial performance, and market reaction.
- Alphabet ranks first by a wide margin on model capability, financials, adoption, and market confidence.
- Meta ranks second on strong adoption and highest revenue growth despite a rough quarter.
- Amazon and Microsoft are mid-pack; both benefit from cloud AI but lack token-share data.
- Apple ranks last on AI spending and adoption signals, though device-level AI is a wild card.
- Private AI players are not scored due to limited data.
- Bosa plans to update the scorecard after new numbers to track narrative, spending, and demand.
Ideas
Alphabet leads AI scorecard by wide margin.
Alphabet ranks first by a wide margin in TechCheck's AI scorecard. It has strong model capability and financials, real adoption signals, and the most market confidence over the last three months as measured by market-cap change; Deirdre Bosa describes this as what conviction looks like when spending and economics line up.
Meta ranks second on adoption, revenue growth.
Meta comes second in the scorecard even though it has had a rough quarter and its profile is more polarized due to capex-to-revenue. Its adoption is strong because it feeds users through Instagram and Facebook, and it has the highest revenue growth among the five companies, which helped offset the rough quarter.
Amazon, Microsoft mid-pack on AI cloud.
Amazon and Microsoft land in the middle of the scorecard. Both benefit from AI flowing through to cloud, but neither has token-share data, meaning their AI models are lower on third-party leaderboards and are not being used in any real visible capacity yet compared with the top ten.
Apple lacks AI conviction, but device wildcard.
Apple ranks last among the Big Five, spending the least on AI and showing the fewest visible adoption signals, so conviction isn't there yet. It could be a wild card if AI becomes a platform shift that plays out at the device level.
