AI: the technological revolution continues

By Christophe Pouchoy, International Equity Manager, La Financière de l’Échiquier (LFDE)

The fundamentals underpinning the growth of the artificial intelligence (AI) sector remain solid. Driven by the emergence of new applications that are pushing back the frontiers of AI, the global AI market is expected to exceed $1,800 billion by 2030. Insights from Christophe Pouchoy, International Equity Manager, La Financière de l’Échiquier (LFDE).

An inexorable trend

Despite bouts of volatility, AI remains a compelling long-term theme. 

After a stellar year for the AI ecosystem in 2024, positive momentum continued in early 2025, notably with the announcement of the Stargate project, which aims to build $500 billion of cloud infrastructure in the United States. However, from late January to early April, the AI ecosystem experienced profit-taking. This followed the emergence of DeepSeek, a Chinese company that has successfully created high-performance AI models at a low cost, which sparked rumours of contract cancellations by some cloud service providers. Another factor was Donald Trump’s tariff announcements. Since mid-April, fears about the impact of tariffs have eased, and reassuring quarterly earnings reports, coupled with the continuation – and even acceleration for some – of significant investment in cloud infrastructure, have fuelled a rebound in technology stocks.

AI is following the same inexorable trend as the major technological breakthroughs that preceded it. Unleashing its full potential will require substantial infrastructure investment, which is why infrastructure still accounts for almost 40% of the market. In a few years’ time, applications are expected to take over and dominate, particularly in the software sector.

Edge AI and physical AI

Until recently, the vast computing power required meant most AI operations were confined to data centres. But pre-trained models can now function efficiently with less processing power,  allowing them to be embedded in devices at the edge of the network, hence the name edge AI. These systems are less reliant on constant connectivity and also benefit from better data security control. These embedded AIs will spread massively to smartphones and organisational assets through physical AI. This is a major step forward that paves the way for medical and logistics robots, automated vehicles, drones and other autonomous industrial applications.

It is enabling a new discipline to take shape, that of scientific AI, which should be a reality within five to ten years. We are only at the beginning of the technological revolution that AI represents – one as powerful as it is irreversible.

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