Adding “AI” to your company’s name used to be a blessing. Right now it’s a curse.

For years, there has been a simple way to convince investors that your company has promise, regardless of its actual business: just jam “AI” into its name.

Simple, yet effective, there is no better way to make sure everyone knows you’re in the AI business than literally putting it in your name, a tactic many US publicly traded companies have turned to to try to ensure their stocks get their fair share of any halo effect from the theme.

But when there’s a nascent pullback in everything AI, that also means you stick out like a sore thumb.

We scanned the S&P 500 Total Market Index for companies whose names make it clear they’re in the artificial intelligence business (mostly relatively smaller stocks).

Think companies like Arrive AI, BigBear.ai, Blaize Holdings, Bullfrog AI Holdings, C3.ai, Datavault AI, Jet.ai, Palladyne AI, Scantech AI Systems, SES AI, SoundHound AI, and Spectral AI.

Those stocks were down a lot this week, as charted here. A Bank of America basket of mostly large-cap US AI beneficiaries also dropped over the same period.

SoundHound AI is at the bottom of the pack despite a dearth of company-specific news, and fell another 6.6% yesterday.

The Takeaway

Adding “AI” to your name could be a sincere way to bring the forefront of a company’s business to top of mind for investors, or it could more cynically be perceived as a cheap stunt to juice the stock. Whichever way you see it, one thing is now clear: it’s far from without risk.