The adoption of artificial intelligence tools is increasing at a rapid pace but remains far from ubiquity, providing more fuel for the AI trade to keep rallying. A string of recent data shows that businesses and consumers in the U.S. are increasingly using generative AI to help complete more tasks and address inquiries more quickly and efficiently. That bodes well for investors who own stocks across the AI trade — ranging from chipmakers to data center suppliers to companies that help electricity get made — because it suggests the hype on Wall Street is backed up by real-world embrace of the technology, with a lot more room to go. The AI trade has reemerged as a clear winner 2025 after a rocky start to the year, with tech stocks and related players in the midst of a strong rebound off their tariff-driven April lows. The momentum sent the tech-heavy Nasdaq rebound to fresh all-time highs. The first data point showing AI adoption is on the rise comes from a perhaps surprising source: the U.S. Census Bureau. The agency, which surveys 1.2 million firms as part of its Business Trends and Outlook Survey, found that the percentage of companies actively using AI tools — such as machine learning, virtual agents, or voice recognition — climbed 9.2% in the second quarter, up from 7.4% in the first quarter and 5.7% in the final three months of 2024. That figure is also about 2.5 times larger than the 3.7% recorded when the Census Bureau began tracking this data in September 2023. When analysts at UBS looked at that data, they concluded that at the current pace, AI adoption among the respondents will cross 10% by the end of the year. “This means AI adoption is likely to soon cross the 10% threshold that took US e-commerce 24 years to reach,” analysts wrote in a June note to clients. “Without taking any single-name views, we believe a peak in overall AI adoption is still a long way off, and accelerating AI use is set to drive further monetization across industries,” they also wrote. Adoption rates vary across companies based on their size. Firms with at least 250 employees reported a higher rate of adoption than smaller organizations in the Census Bureau survey, Goldman Sachs pointed out. Companies in the 100-to-249 employee range were at about 10%, though they had the highest rate of expected adoption over the next six months. To be sure, it’s not a huge shock that larger companies are ahead of the pack here because they likely have the financial resources to test out AI tools without knowing for sure whether the return on investment will be there. But as the cost of AI computing comes down — as many in the tech industry expect to happen — usage is likely to “explode,” in the words of IBM CEO Arvind Krishna. That benefit would extend to smaller firms. Companies that have used generative AI tools have liked what they’ve seen, according to a May report from the consultancy Bain & Co . Of the roughly 200 companies in its sample, more than 80% of their generative AI use cases met or exceeded expectations. On the consumer front, adoption is even more apparent. The share of Americans who have used OpenAI’s ChatGPT has roughly doubled since summer 2023, according to a Pew Research Center survey published last week. Now, about a third of U.S. adults say they have used ChatGPT, Pew’s survey found. Just as adoption rates vary based on the size of companies, the Pew data varies across age groups. Most notably, 58% of adults under age 30 say they’ve used ChatGPT, up from 43% last year and 33% in 2023. The launch of ChatGPT kicked off the current AI boom in late 2022, and racked up more than 100 million monthly users within two months of its launch. While Pew’s data points to healthy growth in adoption, it also shows that there’s still plenty of runway ahead with young adults. Not only are more people using the chatbot, OpenAI is seeing its revenue grow, too. The startup said in early June that it hit $10 billion in annual recurring revenue (ARR) — compared with $5.5 billion in all of last year. The ARR figure includes ChatGPT products for consumers and businesses, as well as its application programming interface, or API, which developers can use to integrate OpenAI’s technology into their own applications, CNBC previously reported. It does not include licensing revenue from close partner and investor Microsoft . With this swift growth, OpenAI is targeting $125 billion in revenue by 2029, The Information has reported . Growing use of OpenAI’s products help explain one of the most impressive data points that Microsoft shared on its most recent earnings report: The company said its cloud unit Azure processed over 100 trillion tokens in the three months ended March 30, up fivefold from the year-ago period, with a record 50 trillion tokens happening in the month of March alone. A token is the smallest unit of data processed by an AI model — fellow Club name Nvidia describes them as the “language and currency of AI.” For Microsoft, processing over 100 trillion tokens in three months underscores the acceleration of AI adoption as enterprises and developers increasingly rely on Microsoft’s AI platforms to write code, build AI agents, and more. When Microsoft reports its April-to-June earnings report in a few weeks, we’ll be closely listening for an update on how many tokens were processed in the quarter. Oracle ‘s June earnings report offered additional evidence of the demand for AI computing, and then on Monday, its stock got another lift after a securities filing disclosed a cloud deal that would generate $30 billion in annual revenue starting in its fiscal 2028 (the company is in its fiscal 2026 first quarter). At least part of that contract is tied to OpenAI and the larger Stargate initiative, in which Oracle is a partner, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday . Putting all these data points together helps contextualize why Wall Street remains energized by the AI trade going on almost three years after the launch of ChatGPT. While investors need to pay close attention to what their AI-related companies are directly saying, doing, and reporting, considering other data can help add to their understanding. It’s all part of the “homework” process that Jim Cramer has long preached. The Club is betting on further AI adoption in a variety of ways. It all starts with Nvidia , which has driven the generative AI revolution with its state-of-the-art chips and currently sits as the world’s most valuable company at nearly $4 trillion market cap. Nvidia’s most formidable competitor, Broadcom, also has a spot in our portfolio because its custom chip design services are coveted by tech giants such as Alphabet’s Google and fellow Club name Meta Platforms . For its part, Meta is among the leading companies for AI monetization, leaning on the technology to improve ad targeting and engagement on its social media apps. That has helped fuel Meta’s remarkable share-price recovery since the dark days of 2022. Meanwhile, industrial companies Eaton and, to a lesser extent, Dover sell products that are used inside the data centers where the most energy-intensive AI computing occurs. GE Vernova , our newest stock, makes the gas and wind turbines that generate electricity to feed the data centers — and all signs point to needing more electricity generation as AI adoption grows. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long NVDA, AVGO, PANW, CRWD, DOV, ETN, GEV, META. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
