Time to Pivot: Ford CEO Jim Farley
Photographer: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images
Ford Motor Co. is now worth $11.4 billion more than it was on May 12. Is it, though? Its stock market value has certainly expanded by that much and was up by almost $22 billion at the recent peak. The reason is fairly straightforward: Morgan Stanley published an analyst note that day alerting investors of the potential for Ford’s new grid-battery business to tap into the artificial intelligence boom. Voila: The 122-year-old car company was now an AI stock.
Is it, though? The sudden transfusion of AI hype to unlikely candidates probably says more about the hype than the candidate. We’ve seen this play out before in that now seemingly ancient precursor, the technology bubble of the late 1990s.