Nvidia, Meta, Walmart among top companies adopting AI

Seemingly every company is obsessed with artificial intelligence these days, whether it’s how the technology is transforming their industry or the effects it’s having on employees and customers.

But the degree to which companies are utilizing AI tools internally and adapting to a rapidly changing reality varies dramatically. A new study from AI-Driven Enterprise Institute (AIDE) breaks down how well S&P 500 companies — and their leaders — are adopting AI compared to their peers.

The top performers, unsurprisingly, are centered in the tech industry, according to the data, which was shared with CNBC. In looking at four areas — literacy, advocacy, orientation and implementation — AIDE gave each company a score of up to 100 in the four categories and then provided an overall index score.

In technology, the highest company score (the average of the orientation and implementation pillars) and the only 100, went to chipmaker Nvidia, which has become the world’s largest company by selling the chips and systems that have powered the development of AI models and services. Meta and Amazon also scored 100, but in the S&P 500, those companies are considered communication services and consumer discretionary names, respectively.

The only other 100 company score went to energy producer SLB, formerly Schlumberger. The next highest scorer was retailer Walmart, followed by AES and NextEra Energy, which are both classified as utilities.

The new open-source index draws from publicly available data like earnings call transcripts, job openings and patent applications to measure how much executives know and say about AI, as well as how much their companies are prioritizing the technology and bringing it into daily operations.

The data doesn’t measure whether AI is driving financial returns, but it’s meant to give leaders an objective way to compare their strategy to their peers without relying on self-reported surveys, said Paul Cheek, AIDE’s CEO and a senior lecturer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“When a board asks a CEO — ‘How are we doing compared to our peer group?’ — I don’t want it to be speculative,” Cheek said in an interview. “I want there to be some data that they can use to back up what they have to share.”

Cheek said there’s “significant room for improvement” for board members and executives to increase their own AI literacy, adding that boards need to better understand AI “as it relates to the ability to manage risk and strategic investments in the organizations that create value for all of us.”

Here are the the 20 companies with the top company scores, based on their “orientation” and “implementation” scores: