Quick Overview

  • A recent release by Carnegie Mellon University and technology company Larridinreportshows that companies with specific disclosures about AI initiatives experience faster revenue growth.
  • The study notes that public companies with the most specific descriptions of their AI initiatives in recent 10-K filings saw annual revenue growth 8 percentage points higher than those with the least specific descriptions.
  • "Many companies are now very specific about AI," said Ameya Kanitkar, founder and CTO of Larridin, in an interview. This reflects that AI adoption has become more mature, with companies moving beyond the experimental stage and focusing more on identifying "high-value" use cases.

Deep Insights

The report, released on August 12, is the first study to indicate that strong AI adoption is "significantly associated with faster revenue growth," but Larridin noted in a press release that this does not necessarily imply better operating margins or future stock performance. Larridin is a technology company that provides an AI return-on-investment measurement platform.

The study controlled for factors such as industry, company size, and prior revenue growth. To ensure results were not skewed by a few standout AI chip companies, the primary analysis excluded Nvidia, Broadcom, AMD, Micron, and Intel. Larridin said researchers also tested a full sample including these companies and found that the overall conclusions of the study remained unchanged.

Researchers rated companies on a five-point scale based on the specificity of their AI disclosures. Of the approximately 500 companies analyzed, more than 150 received the top two ratings for disclosure specificity, with 5 receiving the highest score for reporting deployed AI use cases and quantifying business outcomes.

Visa was one of the companies that received a specificity score of 5, and after disclosing that nearly 26,000 employees had used AI chat tools and describing pilot projects involving AI agents and transactions, its annual revenue grew by 17%.

In contrast, Conagra Brands saw revenue decline by 2% after discussing AI more generally, including leveraging AI and connected data improvements to upgrade operations. Larridin gave Conagra a specificity score of 2.5.

A study announced in June by AI startup Blue Bridge Group AI reached a different conclusion regarding the correlation between AI disclosures and stock price increases. That study found that companies with specific AI strategies outperformed peers relying on vague or purely visionary narratives,in terms of stock price performance。

Kanitkar said: "Comparing these two studies is really an apples-to-oranges comparison. Our findings only mean that, based on the specific correlation method we used, we did not find a link between AI adoption and stock performance... but that does not mean such a link cannot exist."