Morgan Stanley mapped 3 AI futures. One company wins them all.

Morgan Stanley strategists have explored three potential futures for artificial intelligence (AI), concluding that certain companies will thrive regardless of the outcome. The bank examined three scenarios: closed AI models dominating, open models prevailing, and a hybrid approach combining both.

In a closed AI model scenario, proprietary systems continue to offer the best performance, security, and ease of use, leading to continued dominance by a handful of frontier AI labs and major cloud providers like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Infrastructure suppliers, including Nvidia and Bloom Energy, would also benefit from the high resource demands of massive AI systems.

A hybrid world is seen as more realistic, where businesses utilize premium, closed models for complex tasks while relying on cheaper, customizable models for routine work. This scenario would allow companies to deploy AI across public clouds, private data centers, and company-owned hardware, benefiting cloud providers, infrastructure software, cybersecurity firms, and Nvidia.

The third scenario assumes open models become as capable and user-friendly as proprietary ones, leading to broader adoption across enterprises and local devices. Cloud providers, enterprise hardware makers, cybersecurity firms, and edge computing equipment suppliers would see growth. Microsoft would remain a strong performer, while Chinese AI labs and tech giants like MiniMax, Z.ai, Alibaba, Tencent, Dell, HP, and Apple could also thrive.

Despite the differing outcomes, Nvidia appears as a constant winner in all three scenarios, reflecting the ongoing demand for AI servers and networking equipment. Morgan Stanley's broader conclusion is that investors may be overly concerned with the debate over AI model types; the infrastructure companies supporting AI are likely to prosper in any future.