The AI Winners You’re Not Hearing About

When most people think about investing in artificial intelligence, they think about semiconductors, data centers, and the handful of technology giants racing to build AI infrastructure. Those companies have captured enormous attention, and enormous capital, this year. But some of the most compelling long-term beneficiaries of AI may be companies you wouldn’t instinctively associate with the technology at all.

At Summitry, a meaningful part of how we think about AI is less about who is building it and more about who is quietly being transformed by it.

Here is the central tension in today’s market: AI-linked technology stocks have driven almost all of the S&P 500’s gains this year, while the rest of the market, broadly, has been flat or negative. That divergence only makes sense if AI’s benefits stay concentrated in a narrow corner of the economy.

We don’t think that’s how it plays out. For AI to justify the extraordinary capital being invested in it, the productivity gains have to spread. Hospitals, manufacturers, logistics companies, laboratories, retailers, every industry that can be made more efficient, faster, or smarter by AI will eventually feel the impact. In many cases, those benefits are already beginning to arrive, even if the market isn’t pricing them in yet.

Our holdings in Thermo Fisher Scientific and Agilent Technologies illustrate this dynamic well. Both companies are global leaders in the tools, instruments, and reagents that scientists use to conduct research. Neither is an “AI company” by any traditional definition. But both are being meaningfully reshaped by it.

Thermo Fisher has announced a partnership with NVIDIA and OpenAI to leverage AI and deliver greater value to its customers. One of the goals is to dramatically accelerate drug discovery by enabling experiments to run, analyze results, and adjust protocols with minimal human intervention. That is not a distant aspiration; it is an active buildout with named partners and a clear commercial rationale.

Agilent is taking a parallel path, embedding AI throughout its product portfolio to help customers extract more value from their instruments, deepen the relationship between Agilent and the researchers who depend on its tools, and expand the addressable market for its services.

Both companies were founded to serve the scientific enterprise. AI is giving them new ways to serve it, and to grow in the process.

A more unexpected AI beneficiary in our portfolio is Carrier Global, the global leader in HVAC and building systems. Carrier is, in fact, credited with founding the modern commercial air conditioner. Today, it is one of the leading providers of cooling technologies for AI data centers.

This connection is less surprising when you consider the physics: AI computing generates enormous heat, and large-scale data centers require sophisticated, continuous cooling to operate. As hyperscaler capital expenditure surges toward $800 billion this year and over $1 trillion next year, the demand for industrial cooling infrastructure is growing alongside it. Carrier is positioned directly in that path, not as a speculative AI play, but as a provider of essential infrastructure with decades of engineering expertise and global distribution.

Thermo Fisher, Agilent, and Carrier are out of favor with investors, in contrast to many popular semiconductor stocks.They are not the subject of breathless market commentary or analyst upgrades citing AI-driven upside. In many respects, they are overlooked.

But we believe they share something important: durable competitive positions, strong management teams, and genuine exposure to AI’s productivity wave at a price that doesn’t require everything to go right. They are the kinds of businesses where AI improves an already-sound investment rather than serving as the entire thesis.

That distinction matters. When we underwrite a position, we are looking for confidence across a range of scenarios, not just the optimistic one. Companies like these offer AI exposure without asking us to pay for a future that is still speculative.

Nearly every industry stands to benefit from AI over the long run, assuming the technology continues to deliver on its promise of lower costs, faster processes, and better outcomes for customers. The market’s current fixation on the infrastructure layer, the chips, the data centers, the hyperscalers, is understandable. That is where the investment is most visible right now.

But some of the most durable returns from this technology cycle may ultimately come from the companies that quietly embed AI into businesses that were already excellent, and use it to become more so. Those are the businesses we are watching closely, and in many cases, already own.

This post reflects perspectives shared at Summitry’s Q2 2026 Investor Update. The views expressed are those of the Summitry investment team and are intended for informational purposes only. The securities identified and described do not represent all the securities purchased, sold, or recommended for clients’ accounts. The reader should not assume that an investment in the securities identified was or will be profitable.