Machine learning’s (ML) importance in this coronavirus pandemic-induced automation era cannot be overstated. ML, an inextricable application of artificial intelligence (AI) arena, enables systems to utilize existing data to predict outcomes and identify trends, and enhance business operations from experience.
Moreover, the emerging megatrend in the IT industry namely hyperautomation, which states that almost everything in a business can be automated, is likely to gain popularity. This, in turn, is expected to accelerate the deployment rate of data-driven ML models in IT firms.
Further, enhancing customer experience and personalization in the retail industry are likely to act as key catalysts behind the adoption of ML in 2021.
The growing proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, increasing adoption of Machine Learning as a Service (MLaaS), rising demand for faster computing power and emergence of reinforcement learning are paving the way for a ML boom in 2021 and beyond.
Additionally, ML domain is set to witness breakthrough developments in natural language processing or NLP, computer vision, conversational AI, to mention a few, through 2021.
Talking about efforts in NLP and conversational AI verticals, researchers are focusing on enhancing smartness of chat bots and social bots with varied responses and emotion recognition capabilities by utilizing advanced ML-driven pre-trained language models.
For instance, in computer vision,
Alphabet
’s
GOOGL
Google Research team has proposed an ML algorithm to teach agents to solve new tasks by utilizing instances of success.
Moreover, growing proliferation of cloud-based technologies is facilitating growth of Machine Learning as a Service (MLaaS) market. Major cloud players, including
Amazon
AMZN
,
Microsoft
MSFT
and Google offer MLaaS services to customers. Notably, MLaaS services including Amazon Personalize, Amazon Machine Learning, Azure Machine Learning and Google Cloud AI are witnessing traction.
The latest developments in ML are being leveraged by companies across various sectors to make enterprise functions leaner and more efficient. This includes the training of advanced driver assisted systems (ADAS) in self-driving vehicles, increased AR/VR utilization across enterprise, healthcare, and entertainment, edge computing, blockchain, and even advanced warfare devices.
The growing proliferation of ML in cloud computing solutions, quantum computing systems, automation, robotics, leading-edge medical diagnostic systems, and smart consumer electronic appliances, to name a few, has created a unique niche for the technology.
Effective algorithms, frameworks and techniques of ML, which solve complex problems quickly, are expected to continue bolstering its adoption rate in the near term as well as the long run.
Growth Projections for ML Buoys Optimism
Per the
data provided by Grand View Research
, ML market is expected to hit $96.7 billion by 2025, witnessing a CAGR of 43.8% between 2019 and 2025. Per
Technavio data
, ML market it is poised to grow at a CAGR of almost 39% between 2020 and 2024.
Moreover, according to a
report from Mordor Intelligence
, global MLaaS market is expected to see a CAGR of 43% between 2021 and 2026.
Companies including tech startups to diverse multinationals are leaving no stone unturned to advance ML and AI capabilities with an aim to gain a competitive edge in the broader AI market, defying coronavirus crisis induced business impacts.
In fact, per
IDC data
, spending on AI systems is expected to grow beyond $110 billion in 2024 from $50.1 billion estimated in 2020, at a CAGR of 20.1% between 2019 and 2024.
The companies are leveraging ML to design robust applications, which are revolutionizing broader working trends of various domains, including supply-chain optimization, customer care services, logistics, transportation, healthcare, security, utility, defense, financial services and banking, robotics, and agriculture.
Here are five tech companies that are well-poised to gain from ML-driven advancements or have been supporting the deployment of ML for their clients amid coronavirus crisis induced proliferation of cloud computing.
One Year Price Performance
Microsoft
is well-positioned to gain from increasing penetration of ML expertise across its product portfolio, including Office 365, Dynamics 365, HoloLens and Azure. The company’s GitHub acquisition, which enriched the company’s ML capabilities, is a key catalyst in this regard.
Moreover, Microsoft, currently carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), offers ML-based ML.NET open-source cross-platform, Azure Machine Learning service, AutoML tools, Cognitive API Services, Azure Machine Learning Studio, to name a few. With these solutions, the tech giant intends to democratize the use of AI and ML. You can see
the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here
.
Notably, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for earnings for fiscal 2021 has improved 0.4% to $7.37 over the past 30 days.
Alphabet
’s division Google, which continues to strengthen its ML solutions portfolio, remains a top name among tech giants.
The company’s cloud computing arm, Google Cloud, is continuously gaining solid momentum with the support of its robust ML solutions. Its Document AI solution, which is backed by ML, helps in analyzing documents efficiently. Further, its advanced and reliable cloud infrastructure that supports the deployment of ML models and smooth functioning of ML workflows is a major positive.
Apart from cloud computing, the company has been exploring ways to infuse ML techniques in the process of drug discovery. TensorFlow, developed by the Google Brain team, is a free and open-source software library for ML, with particular focus on training and inference of deep neural networks.
Further, Alphabet, which currently carries a Zacks Rank #2, has been a frontrunner in the autonomous driving space on the back of its Waymo vehicles, which are integrated with the ML technology.
Notably, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the company’s 2021 earnings has moved north by 0.6% to $69.28 over the past 60 days.
NVIDIA
NVDA
intends to focus on new growth boosters for its data center business, such as inference, data science and machine learning techniques to consolidate its presence in the data center market.
The chip maker offers solutions that combine hardware and software optimized for high-performance ML to help businesses to seamlessly generate illuminating insights out of their data. For instance, Tesla P100 accelerator is based on NVIDIA’s Pascal architecture that is designed for ML and HPC.
Highly preferred by the datacenter operators, NVIDIA’s GPUs are likely to help the company grab a larger market space. The company’s acquisition of Mellanox is a key catalyst in this regard.
Further, Arm acquisition is expected to aid NVIDIA, which currently carries a Zacks Rank #2, in offering end-to-end ecosystem of technology across the data center, IoT, autonomous vehicles and mobile domains. The company is now well-poised to upscale its inference technology, robust drivers, and accelerators by utilizing Arm’s robust architecture and chip designs.
Moreover, data scientists can leverage RAPIDS and NVIDIA CUDA to accelerate ML pipelines on NVIDIA GPUs, and reduce the time taken by complex ML operations, which include data loading, processing, and training from days to minutes.
Notably, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the company’s fiscal 2022 earnings has moved north by 15.1% to $13.37 over the past 60 days.
Applied Materials
AMAT
is applying ML in semiconductor fabs to enhance automated defect analysis.
The company, currently carrying a Zacks Rank #2, has developed an automated defect classification technology that utilizes different imaging techniques to identify and eliminate defects in chip manufacturing.
Moreover, the company’s commitment toward development of new AI and ML powered computing materials and designs holds promise.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the company’s fiscal 2021 earnings has been revised upward by 19.4% in the past 60 days to $5.98 per share.
Tencent Holdings
TCEHY
is integrating ML and AI expertise including data protection and anti-fraud identity authentication capabilities, in streaming, security software, and other services. This is enabling the company, currently carrying a Zacks Rank #2, to expand clientele across finance, media, education and e-commerce verticals.
Additionally, the company’s open-sourced project on distributed ML platform, Angel, based on parameter server framework, holds promise.
Notably, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the company’s 2022 earnings has moved north by 1.7% to $2.92 over the past 30 days.
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