Meet the ‘AI Centurions’—6 formerly sleepy stocks that now have market caps over $100 billion

Meet the AI Centurions.

While reporting a story on the extraordinary comeback at GE led by CEO Larry Culp, I was struck by the high-voltage stock performance of GE Vernova. What from the outside looks like the ultimate old economy stalwart, it was once a pillar of the world’s most famous conglomerate. But since it was spun off from GE in early 2024, it has zoomed from a starting market cap of $39 billion to hit $288 billion on July 21. In large part, it was the AI explosion that powered the moonshot. Turns out GE Vernova is not alone—there’s a whole cadre of old-line companies that have mined the AI boom to multiply their valuations many times, and sprinted to join the $100 billion-plus valuation club. 

As a starting point, I went back three years to mid-July of 2023, the approximate point when hyperscalers began planning for big expansion in AI data centers, or later if the enterprise did a spinoff or went public more recently. The two criteria: Reaching that $100 billion market cap benchmark after beginning the race far back, and achieving annualized returns of at least 100%. The search revealed five especially notable examples in addition to GE Vernova. Four are effectively old-timers that like GE Vernova sell equipment to the hyperscalers: Seagate Technology, Vertiv, Western Digital, and Western’s recent spinoff, Sandisk. In the decade prior to the AI liftoff, they all they sat alongside the GE power unit in the underachiever category, registering tepid growth and weak profitability. Seagate and Western, the two that were publicly traded prior to the AI phenomenon, registered fairly flat share prices, and the original Vertiv franchise got axed by its parent for delivering chronically poor results.

Two of the choices are measured over a period shorter than three years. GE Vernova split from GE in April of 2024, and Sandisk separated from Western Digital in February of last year.

The sextet suddenly reset on a high-powered trajectory by hatching groundbreaking products that helped AI data centers achieve new frontiers in storage (Seagate, Western Digital and Sandisk), and cooling (Vertiv), while the soaring demand for power hiked sales of GE Vernova’s giant turbines. The sixth qualifier is the only one that doesn’t sell data center gear. AppLovin is an AdTech platform that greatly benefits from AI-driven acceleration in processing capacity. It’s that data-crunching prowess driven by the likes of Nvidia’s GPUs that enables AppLovin to achieve the top position in marketing and monetizing mobile apps and games.

GE Vernova started the contest at by far the highest market cap of just under $40 billion (it’s also being measured over a shorter period, since it’s been publicly traded for only two years and four months). All of the others stood at just $7 to $14 billion, and now boast valuations that as of the market close on July 21, ranged from $114 billion (Vertiv) to $288 billion (GE Vernova). At the median, their stocks advanced at a 145% annual pace over the past three years. During that period, their combined valuation jumped from $90 to almost exactly $1 trillion. The $900 billion-plus increase accounts for roughly 3.5% in the rise in the S&P 500 market cap since mid-July of 2023. By the way, the over 100% yearly share gains for the six is more than quadruple the around 30% for the Mag Seven. 

In terms of metrics, “100” is a common theme for these six comers, since they all sport valuations of over $100 billion and exceeded 100% a year in share gains. As recently as the spring of 2024, none of these future stars made, or would have made, even the top 300 list of America’s most valuable companies. (Seagate’s officially headquartered in Ireland but since it runs operations, and its CEO works, from Fremont, Cal., I included it among the six.) Here’s still another “100” connection. Now, all but Vertiv would rank in the top 100 of U.S. companies by valuation and as of July 21, and Vertiv stood on the cusp at 101st. GE Vernova, Western Digital, Seagate, and Sandisk are all currently worth more than Blackstone, Salesforce, Pfizer, and Uber.

To label the group, I chose the term “centurion,” rooted in “centum” for 100 in Latin. Centurion’s summoned to describe Roman army officers who command 100 soldiers, cricket stars who score 100 runs and Navy pilots who notch 100 night landings. Hence, I’ll give these six beneficiaries of the 21st century’s signature technological leap the title of “The AI Centurions.” 

Proviso: These sturdy legionnaires are victorious for now, but face uncertain prospects. They’re highly dependent on a continuation of the giant surge in spending on AI........

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