Future-Proof Your Portfolio with Robotics and AI

Robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence—or RAAI—is one of the most fascinating sectors today. After all, who doesn’t get excited when talking about real-life robots and how they are transforming how we live, work and play in our everyday lives? But for investors, RAAI is much more than just a fantastical, childlike look into the future of robots. Just as computers and the Internet created a digital revolution that has transformed nearly every aspect of our lives, RAAI is bringing about a robotics revolution that promises to be even larger and drive even greater change. That’s why, at a time when every investor is seeking ways to help mitigate market risk and help drive the potential for long-term returns, many are looking to robotics and AI to help future-proof their portfolios.

What makes RAAI particularly promising from an investor’s perspective is that its applications and technologies are fundamental to the growth of nearly every industry and every geography around the world. Here are just a few examples of how RAAI is transforming ‘business as usual’ while rewarding investors:

• Cybersecurity (+45% in 12 months)

With the rise of the digital age has come a parallel rise in cybercrime—and a fast-growing need for cybersecurity. Today, companies specialize in a vast menu of applications and technologies that use AI to help battle cybercrime such as ransomware, fileless malware, and nation-state attacks. Facebook’s data breach is just the most recent in a long string of major, highly publicized breaches that put users’ personal information in the hands of cybercriminals and resulted in serious financial consequences for the companies that have been hit. Because preventing cyberattacks is a top priority for companies of every size, demand for security solutions is driving up stock prices across this growing sector.

• Healthcare (+28% in 12 months)

Innovations in healthcare robotics have helped drive up and sustain stock prices and investor returns. While the numbers are certainly making investors happy, patients are clearly the biggest winners. Healthcare robotics are making it possible to identify, invent, investigate, and implement technologies that deliver the right treatment to the right patient at the right time—and at the right cost. The wheels are already in motion to use robotics to take patients from symptom to diagnosis to treatment in a single day. Today, a surgical robot can slice a tiny grape into four perfect quadrants, peel the grape to remove precisely 1/100^th of a centimeter of skin, and leave the rest of the grape perfectly in tact. This level of sub-millimeter accuracy was unthinkable just a decade ago. Handheld, intelligent computers are being used to sense, compute and record a patient’s health status. At this rate of innovation, the benefits for patients and investors alike are expected to continue to increase.

• Logistics Automation (+22% in 12 months)

Amazon continues to make headlines for its innovations on the warehouse floor, but it’s certainly not alone in its quest to automate logistics processes to help drive down costs and drive up service. Logistics automation has not only had a major impact on customer expectations, but it has also rewritten the list of winners and losers in the retail space. Retailers who are investing in solutions to automate and rethink logistics in the warehouse and across the supply chain are winning market share at a rapid pace. Because logistics automation is expected to dictate tomorrow’s market leaders, the demand for new solutions is on the rise, and the industry as a whole is continuing to push the boundaries of innovation.

RAAI is driving fundamental change in unexpected areas as well. Agricultural robots can now determine when an individual plant needs a specific nutrient, is fighting a disease, or is battling an infestation, and can then determine what action to take (such as adding a nutrient to the water for a single plant). They can even be taught how to pick and pack even the most delicate fruits and vegetables with less damage than a human worker. Japan’s robotic caretakers are now being used to support Japan’s overburdened healthcare workforce by helping to manage medical adherence, providing much-needed entertainment and companionship, leading exercise and rehabilitation programs, and more.

Artificial intelligence is using the recent flood of Big Data to fuel its own renaissance. Netflix uses AI-generated algorithms to deliver search results that are matched to each user’s viewing habits, driving up sales and saving the company billions of dollars in potential lost revenue. Google relies on AI to translate the massive amounts of data it collects from the posts, comments, and search queries of its more than 1 billion users. From entertainment to insurance to self-driving cars, AI and Big Data are playing a growing and vital role.

While many investors are aware of robotics and AI as a market sector, only those who are aware of how deeply these fundamental technologies extend into every area of our world understand the potential it presents from an investment perspective. That reach can’t be overstated. For investors, that makes investing in RAAI an attractive strategy to capitalize on the potential for growth while helping to manage risk and provide attractive, risk-adjusted returns. The result: a portfolio that is truly future-proof by taking advantage of all the future has to offer.