Countless barrels of digital ink have been spilled pondering what kinds of changes AI will bring to the world of work and the corporate landscape. Here on Slope, we are witness to stocks that, for reasons that are not entirely clear, have crumbled with such force that one wonders if they’ll even be around in five years.
Here’s one specific example, brought to you by way of this announcement from the Perplexity AI platform:
The moment I saw this, I instantly thought of Intuit (INTU), a household name and a public company that’s been around for decades whose value has declined by almost 60% in only nine months!!
It’s not like the need for personal finance and tax preparation software instantly disappeared. Instead, it’s being displaced by vastly cheaper and equally powerful solutions. Companies like Intuit could find themselves going the way of D.E.C., Sun Microsystems, and Osborne Computer if they don’t make some enormous changes like, I dunno, laying off 80% of their workforce.
I’m not nearly smart enough to anticipate where all this is going to wind up, but I do know that stock charts tend to give you the heads-up months before anything appears in the news about big changes in the economic landscape. The next few years are going to be mesmerizing.
