The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that if OpenAI and Anthropic follow through on their plans and go public later this year, they will likely be valued in the hundreds of billions of dollars by investors. It's unclear if AI will significantly impact the economy or who will benefit from it. Companies have invested heavily in AI, but it's uncertain who is winning, if anyone. One of the few certainties in the current tumult is that semiconductors are vital. Any company that wants to develop AI applications has to buy huge amounts of chips to do the work needed for AI models to operate. This means that chip makers offer a dependable way to bet on the continued growth of AI. It doesn't explain, though, what has abruptly turbocharged these stocks over the past month. One possibility is that the boom results from technological shifts that are allowing one type of chip known as central processing units (CPUs), to replace another type of chip, known as graphics processing units (GPUs), in certain applications. The run-up in chip stocks could also reflect worries about a continued blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which will crimp output of essential products needed to make chips, such as helium and naptha.