AI will soon ‘be a $600 billion addressable software market,’ C3.ai CEO says

As AI hype continues to build, so does the size of the market — and it could be worth as much as $600 billion, according to C3.ai (AI) CEO Tom Siebel.

"AI will soon be a $600 billion addressable software market," Siebel told Yahoo Finance on Friday. "Everyone will be using enterprise AI applications, just like they use PCs, just like they use relational databases, just like we use CRM."

AI stocks have been on a massive upward climb in the aftermath of the sector's "ChatGPT moment," in which the Open AI-built chatbot sent artificial intelligence careening into the public consciousness.

C3.ai is one of those stocks and has seen its shares climb about 134% year-to-date. Siebel credits that rise, in part, to the role that generative AI like ChatGPT has played in upping investors' interest.

"Generative AI definitely accelerated the interest in AI," Siebel said. "So AI is now at a peak, and that seems to work very well for C3.ai because I think we're the largest application player in that space."

However, it's not just a matter of interest; AI adoption is also shifting into high gear, according to Bank of America Head of Global Thematic Research Haim Israel.

"No other technology has been spreading so fast, [with] an unprecedented amount of applications that can be based on the back of it, and the technology itself is just at warp speed in terms of how fast it's developing," he recently told Yahoo Finance Live. "I think that now it's just exactly where the iPhone was in 2007. We're about to start seeing more and more application, real value."

For Q3 2023, C3.ai clocked $66.7 million in quarterly revenue and a net loss of $0.57 per share, per its March 3 report. Although C3.ai's business is not focused on conversational AI, Siebel made it clear that the company is locked in on generative AI.

"It's difficult to overestimate the impact of [generative AI]," he said. "Now, we're not using it for chat, okay? We're using it for a fundamentally different purpose. We're combining enterprise search – think the Google user interface – with natural language processing, generative AI, and reinforcement learning to fundamentally change the nature of the human-computer interface for enterprise applications."

Those types of enterprise applications are varied, ranging from human resources to manufacturing, Siebel added. C3 AI's current customers include Shell, ConEdison, Raytheon, the U.S. Air Force, and the Department of Defense, according to the company's website.

Allie Garfinkle is a Senior Tech Reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter at @agarfinks and on LinkedIn.

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