Victoria Greene on navigating AI boom as it boosts stocks beyond tech

Like most investors, Victoria Greene is keeping an eye on the artificial intelligence boom. The chief investment officer of G Squared Private Wealth believes the divergence between AI winners and losers will widen this year. She expects artificial intelligence to become less of a buzzword and more of a real tool that companies implement to improve their profit margins and revenue. G Squared manages more than $575 million in client assets. “People are going to need to start making money with AI,” Greene told CNBC in an interview. “At some point, you can’t just talk about [the] future, you’re going to have to show that the progress is being made.” Even though AI-related stocks sell for expensive valuations, Greene still believes the use of AI is in its “early innings” and will continue to push beneficiaries higher. Not by tech alone Greene said that AI-related gains aren’t exclusive to technology stocks. For instance, she’s bullish on the industrials sector as a longer-term play. “You’re going to continue to see so much upgrade. This AI shift is not a flash in the pan,” she noted. “This is going to be people continuing to need more power. They’re going to shift how they’re doing business but they’re also going to be having to run their businesses more efficiently, especially on the power infrastructure side, and that goes into anything from warehouse to transportation to power plants.” Within industrials, Greene named Quanta Services , Eaton and Emerson Global as some of her top picks. Conversely, Tesla might have initially been boosted by the AI boom, but is now struggling, the Merrill Lynch alumnus said. Likewise, Salesforce — which tumbled 20% in a single day last week on the back of fiscal second-quarter guidance that trailed analyst estimates — could be another AI loser, she said. “Potentially Salesforce was a canary showing that some of these legacy software firms have had a really bad run of it and are at risk for disruptions,” she said.