One sector that is expected to boom over the next decade is artificial intelligence.
There are many businesses that claim they're part of AI development, so it's hard to know which shares will give the clearest exposure to AI and deliver good returns. So, here are a few ideas to think about:
BetaShares NASDAQ 100 ETF (ASX: NDQ)
All of the top US businesses are doing something with AI one way or another. Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), Facebook, Amazon and Apple are all trying to make their technology better with AI.
If it's hard to pick one winner out of a group then why not just buy the whole group? This exchange-traded fund (ETF) gives us the option to buy a piece of 100 of the largest businesses on the NASDAQ including others like NVIDIA which claims to have artificial intelligence computing leadership.
Appen Ltd (ASX: APX)
Of the ASX WAAAX shares, Appen arguably may have the best claim of AI exposure. It says it's a global leader in the development of high-quality, human-annotated training data for machine learning and artificial intelligence. Indeed, some of the big US tech shares are some of its large clients.
Despite recently upgrading its earnings expectations for FY19 the Appen share price is still a lot lower than it was in the middle of the year, so today could be a good time to snap up a relatively good bargain. .
Brainchip Holdings Ltd (ASX: BRN)
Brainchip is one of the few shares on the ASX as a genuine developer of AI. It says that it's the leading provider of neuromorphic computing solutions, a type of artificial intelligence that is inspired by the biology of the human neuron, spiking neural networks, which can learn autonomously, evolve and associate information like the human brain.
It's hard at this stage to say how successful or not the company can be. It is making a little revenue but not enough to cover the cash burn for research, development, marketing and so on. Even great technology businesses can't escape the realities of cashflow.
Foolish takeaway
Each of these investments could do well over the long-term. The NASDAQ ETF is probably the safest because of its diversification, but Appen looks the most attractively priced considering how much growth it's still producing.
