Just a few months after it looked like Seattle was being left out of the national conversation about artificial intelligence and the new tech economy, CNBC’s “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer put the spotlight on the region.
In a segment (above) titled “Tales from the Emerald City,” Cramer waxed about a recent West Coast trip where he spent a few days “at the epicenter of AI.”
“It’s not in Silicon Valley,” Cramer said. “It’s actually in the Seattle area, where Amazon and Microsoft are headquartered.”
Cramer called Microsoft the “real leader” in AI because it owns just under half of OpenAI, creators of ChatGPT, and he said that while other companies talk about how they’re going to make a killing in generative AI, Microsoft’s already doing it.
The former hedge fund manager talked about Microsoft Copilot, the “AI companion” that brings the company’s AI capabilities together into a combined experience. Cramer said people behind the scenes at Microsoft indicate that Copilot “has a shockingly strong level of absorption, very quickly.”
Cramer also complimented Amazon, which he said is using AI technology “to figure out what you want before you know you want it.”
The love for Seattle was in stark contrast to the mood in September, when it looked like the national media was keen to forget the region’s potential as an AI hub.
Seattle should be “viewed as one of the very best centers of excellence for AI,” Matt McIlwain, managing director at Seattle VC firm Madrona, said during an episode of the Shift AI Podcast. But, he told GeekWire in September: “sometimes we are too understated.”
Cramer has been called a lot of things. Understated is probably not one of them, and in his stated quest to make money for his viewers, he said AI stocks have room to run.
“Cynics say that the AI move is just too big already,” Cramer said. “I can tell you from my face-to-face talks with people in Seattle, this move’s just getting started.”
