Who’s Disrupting — and Funding — the AI Boom

Live from Morgan Stanley’s European Tech, Media and Telecom Conference in Barcelona, our roundtable of analysts discusses tech disruptions and datacenter growth, and how Europe factors in.

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Paul Walsh: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Paul Walsh, Morgan Stanley's European Head of Research Product. 

Today we return to my conversation with Adam Wood. Head of European Technology and Payments, Emmet Kelly, Head of European Telco and Data Centers, and Lee Simpson, Head of European Technology. 

We were live on stage at Morgan Stanley's 25th TMT Europe conference. We had so much to discuss around the themes of AI enablers, semiconductors, and telcos. So, we are back with a concluding episode on tech disruption and data center investments. 

It's Thursday the 13th of November at 8am in Barcelona. 

After speaking with the panel about the U.S. being overweight AI enablers, and the pockets of opportunity in Europe, I wanted to ask them about AI disruption, which has been a key theme here in Europe. I started by asking Adam how he was thinking about this theme. 

Adam Wood: It’s fascinating to see this year how we've gone in most of those sectors to how positive can GenAI be for these companies? How well are they going to monetize the opportunities? How much are they going to take advantage internally to take their own margins up? To flipping in the second half of the year, mainly to, how disruptive are they going to be? And how on earth are they going to fend off these challenges? 

Paul Walsh: And I think that speaks to the extent to which, as a theme, this has really, you know, built momentum. 

Adam Wood: Absolutely. And I mean, look, I think the first point, you know, that you made is absolutely correct – that it's very difficult to disprove this. It's going to take time for that to happen. It's impossible to do in the short term. I think the other issue is that what we've seen is – if we look at the revenues of some of the companies, you know,  and huge investments going in there. 

And investors can clearly see the benefit of GenAI.  And so investors are right to ask the question, well, where's the revenue for these businesses? 

You know, where are we seeing it in info services or in IT services, or in enterprise software. And the reality is today, you know, we're not seeing it. And it's hard for analysts to point to evidence that – well, no, here's the revenue base, here's the benefit that's coming through. And so, investors naturally flip to, well, if there's no benefit, then surely, we should focus on the risk. 

So, I think we totally understand, you know, why people are focused on the negative side of things today. I think there are differences between the sub-sectors. I mean, I think if we look, you know, at IT services, first of all, from an investor point of view, I think that's been pretty well placed in the losers’ buckets and people are most concerned about that sub-sector… 

Paul Walsh: Something you and the global team have written a lot about. 

Adam Wood: Yeah, we've written about, you know, the risk of disruption in that space, the need for those companies to invest, and then the challenges they face. But I mean, if we just keep it very, very simplistic. If Gen AI is a technology that, you know, displaces labor to any extent – companies that have played labor arbitrage and provide labor for the last 20 - 25 years, you know, they're going to have to make changes to their business model. 

So, I think that's understandable. And they're going to have to demonstrate how they can change and invest and produce a business model that addresses those concerns. I'd probably put info services in the middle. But the challenge in that space is you have real identifiable companies that have emerged, that have a revenue base and that are challenging a subset of the products of those businesses. So again, it's perfectly understandable that investors would worry.  In that context, it's not a potential threat on the horizon. It's a real threat that exists today against certainly their businesses. 

I think software is probably the most interesting. I'd put it in the kind of final bucket where I actually believe… Well, I think first of all, we certainly wouldn't take the view that there's  no risk of disruption and things aren't going to change. Clearly that is going to be the case. 

I think what we'd want to do though is we'd want to cont