AI Giants Compete in US Stocks: Capital Game of GPT-5, Claude 4, and Gemini Ultra

Introduction

In 2025, Wall Street is experiencing an unprecedented intertwining of technology revolution and capital frenzy. As the world's largest capital market, the US stock market not only reflects macroeconomic fundamentals but also maps the iteration speed of technological innovation. Among many drivers, the competition among large AI models has become a core variable affecting tech stock valuations and market sentiment. The head-to-head clash of the top three large language models—OpenAI's GPT-5, Anthropic's Claude 4, and Google DeepMind's Gemini Ultra—is not just a contest of technical strength, but a capital game involving trillions of dollars in market cap. From a US stock market perspective, this article will deeply analyze the far-reaching impact of this AI "three-way battle" on investors, industry structure, and the macroeconomy.

1. AI Wave in US Tech Sector: Evolution from Concept to Performance

1.1 From "Concept Hype" to "Performance Delivery" Phase

Looking back at 2023-2024, the rise of US tech stocks was largely driven by AI concepts. Investors pinned high hopes on the productivity revolution brought by generative AI. NVIDIA's GPU supply shortage pushed its market cap above $3 trillion, while cloud giants like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon also gained new growth curves from AI service deployment. However, entering 2025, the market is no longer satisfied with "storytelling." Investors are demanding real revenue growth and profit conversion. This means that the capabilities, cost efficiency, and commercialization paths of AI models will directly determine the stock performance of related companies.

1.2 Capital Power Behind the Three Models

• OpenAI (GPT-5): As a pioneer in the industry, each iteration of OpenAI tugs at market nerves. The launch of GPT-5 is seen as Microsoft's key bet to continue increasing its AI investment. The growth rate of Microsoft Azure cloud services' AI revenue heavily depends on the call volume of GPT series models. If GPT-5 achieves a qualitative leap in logical reasoning and multimodal understanding, it will further consolidate Microsoft's leadership in enterprise AI, boosting its stock price.

• Anthropic (Claude 4): Founded by former OpenAI employees, Anthropic focuses on "safe, controllable AI." Claude 4's advantages in long-context processing, code generation, and safety alignment have won it many enterprise customers in high-risk fields such as finance, law, and healthcare. Amazon, as the main investor in Anthropic (investment of $4 billion), uses its AWS cloud service as the primary deployment platform for Claude 4. Claude 4's competitiveness directly affects Amazon's share in the AI cloud market, thus impacting AMZN's stock performance.

• Google DeepMind (Gemini Ultra): After merging DeepMind with Google Brain, Gemini Ultra became the core product for Google to reclaim AI leadership. Gemini Ultra has unique advantages in native multimodality, cross-language understanding, and deep integration with Google's ecosystem (Search, YouTube, Gmail). If Gemini Ultra can significantly improve the accuracy of search ads or boost Google Cloud's revenue, Alphabet's (GOOGL) valuation logic will be redefined.

2. GPT-5 vs Claude 4 vs Gemini Ultra: How Technology Competition Reshapes Investment Logic

2.1 Model Capability Comparison: Key to Valuation Ceiling

Based on public benchmarks and industry evaluations, GPT-5 slightly leads in comprehensive knowledge Q&A, creative writing, and complex reasoning; Claude 4 excels in ultra-long text parsing (over 200,000 tokens) and logical consistency; Gemini Ultra leads in video understanding, multilingual tasks, and real-time information fusion. For US stock investors, these technical differences translate into different market opportunities:

• If GPT-5 is strong: Microsoft's Copilot product line (Office 365, GitHub, Windows) will achieve deeper AI integration, with enterprise subscription prices likely rising, driving MSFT's revenue and profit margins up.
• If Claude 4 is strong: Amazon's Bedrock service will attract more compliance-focused financial institutions, with AWS's AI revenue share potentially rising from 5% in 2024 to over 10% in 2025, easing market concerns about AWS growth slowdown.
• If Gemini Ultra is strong: Google Cloud is likely to capture more AI training and inference market share, while Google Search's AI-ification (SGE) will boost ad click-through rates, driving ad revenue above expectations.

2.2 Cost and Pricing: The Divide of Profit Margins

Besides model capabilities, running costs are a core variable affecting company profits. GPT-5's training cost is estimated to exceed $1 billion, and costs for Claude 4 and Gemini Ultra are also high. To attract developers, companies have successively cut prices: in Q1 2025, OpenAI reduced the API price of GPT-4o by 25%, with Anthropic and Google following suit. This has made the market focus on the "AI profitability" issue.

• For Microsoft: If GPT-5's inference cost is 50% lower than GPT-4, even offering Copilot to users for free could be profitable through advertising or ecosystem consumption.
• For Amazon: Claude 4's cost advantage in low-latency scenarios allows AWS to offer more competitive distributed AI services, attracting small and medium developers.
• For Google: Gemini Ultra runs on Google's own hardware (TPU v6), providing better cost control than competitors relying on NVIDIA GPUs, forming a significant moat for Google's profit margins.

2.3 Ecosystem Integration Ability: Who Understands "Moat" Better?

Single model capability alone is not enough to determine the ultimate winner. What truly affects long-term US stock trends is the depth of integration between models and the company's existing business ecosystem.

• Microsoft: Has a massive user base from Office, Teams, Azure DevOps, LinkedIn, GitHub. GPT-5 can be directly embedded into these products, creating a high-stickiness subscription system.
• Amazon: Deep cloud customer base on AWS, while e-commerce, Alexa, Prime, and other scenarios can use Claude 4 to enhance user experience.
• Google: Search, Android, Chrome, YouTube form the world's largest digital ecosystem. Gemini Ultra's integration with these products will generate an exponential data flywheel effect.

3. Practical Implications for US Stock Investors

3.1 Key Catalysts: Earnings and Product Launch Calendar

The second half of 2025 will be a period of dense releases and iterations of the three models. Investors should focus on the following:

• Microsoft FY2025 Q4 earnings (expected July): Watch Azure AI revenue growth, Copilot paid user count, and renewal of GPT-5 exclusive terms.
• Amazon 2025 Q2 earnings (expected October): Watch AWS AI-related revenue share, number of commercial cases using Bedrock and Claude 4.
• Google 2025 Q3 earnings (expected October): Watch Google Cloud profitability, SGE's boost to search ad revenue.

3.2 Risk Factors: Regulation, Bubbles, and Substitutes

Despite the strong AI narrative, US stock investors need to be aware of the following risks:

1. Regulatory Policy: The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the EU AI Act may impose higher requirements on model training data compliance, increasing operating costs.
2. Valuation Bubble: AI hardware stocks like NVIDIA have accumulated huge gains in 2024; if model performance improvements have diminishing returns, it could lead to a "buy the rumor, sell the news" correction.
3. Open Source Model Threat: Open source models like Meta's Llama 4 and Mistral are making progress, potentially eroding the high gross margins of closed-source giants.

3.3 Diversified Allocation Strategy

For AI-driven US stock investment, a "core-satellite" strategy is recommended:

• Core Position: Hold Microsoft, Google, and Amazon three giants to enjoy AI ecosystem integration dividends. Their diversified businesses effectively hedge against the risk of a single model competition failure.
• Satellite Position: Bet on AI infrastructure suppliers like NVIDIA (GPU), Broadcom (custom AI chips), TSMC (advanced process), and AI application software companies (Adobe, Salesforce).
• Hedge Position: Consider shorting some overvalued AI concept small caps, or buying put options on S&P 500 index to guard against systematic corrections.

4. Conclusion: Who Will Win the "Throne" of US Stock AI?

The competition among GPT-5, Claude 4, and Gemini Ultra is essentially a comprehensive contest of "model capability + commercialization ability + ecosystem depth." From the current situation, no single player can dominate. In the short term (2025-2026), Microsoft, with its first-mover advantage and deep Office ecosystem, may be the first to benefit in terms of revenue; in the medium term (2026-2027), Amazon's cloud infrastructure advantage and Anthropic's differentiated positioning in safety may bring a second growth curve; in the long term (after 2027), Google's synergy of TPU chips and search ecosystem may overtake late.

For US stock investors, this AI model competition is not a winner-takes-all zero-sum game but a catalyst that lifts the valuation center of the entire tech sector. The key is to maintain sensitivity to the rhythm of technology iteration and rationally evaluate the real impact of each model release on various links in the industry chain. As AI evolves from a "tool" to an "infrastructure," the US stock market will undergo the most profound transformation since the internet. Only those companies that can translate technological innovation into sustainable financial returns will ultimately transcend cycles and become evergreens in the capital market.

Note: The views expressed in this article are based on publicly available information in 2025 and do not constitute any investment advice. Investing involves risks; exercise caution.