Market cap: AU$11.13 billion
Share price: AU$17.30

NEXTDC is Australia’s leading data centre operator, with 13 functioning centres throughout Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Japan, and nine more currently in the works. The company has forged several business and academic partnerships to enhance Australia's digital infrastructure.

NEXTDC revealed last September that it would be partnering with La Trobe Business School’s Research Centre for Data Analytics and Cognition on research into future theoretical and practical applications of AI across a range of industries.

On August 6, NEXTDC obtained NVIDIA's (NASDAQ:NVDA) DGX-Ready Data Center Program certification, enabling them to optimize NVIDIA's AI platforms and power advanced AI data centres in Australia. The company is also this year’s recipient of the Australian Data Centre Service Company of the Year award, an accolade given to companies that demonstrate excellence and innovation in the Australian data services industry.

Market cap: AU$488.95 million
Share price: AU$2.03

Appen began in 1996 as an automated speech recognition startup by a couple based in Sydney, New South Wales. Today, the company operates as a trusted partner to firms transitioning to AI usage, with a suite of industry-specific large language models and AI-training products.

In January, long-time partner Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) cut ties to focus on in-house AI. Despite the loss of Google’s business, Appen’s Q2 2024 results showed revenue growth and a positive month-on-month trajectory. Following their release on July 30, the company's share price leapt 55.81 percent from the prior day, and it has continued upwards, rising over 200 percent since then.

Market cap: AU$475.48 million
Share price: AU$0.23

BrainChip is the company behind Akida, a revolutionary digital neuromorphic chip that’s built with a spiking neural network, a type of artificial network that mimics the way messages are passed between neurons in the human brain.

Because the AI is inside the chip, the chip can learn on its own and is not reliant on the cloud or other networks. This makes it much more secure and reduces latency as well. The company’s lowest-power version, Akida Pico, was released on October 1.

On June 5, the company released a white paper for its newly developed technology called TENNs-PLEIADES, an efficient AI processor that can perform complex tasks like decision-making, object recognition and data analysis. Unlike Akida, this chip is designed for spatiotemporal classification and detection using event-based data, making it particularly well-suited for low-latency applications such as self-driving cars.

Market cap: AU$167.87 million
Share price: AU$0.76

Ai-Media Technologies is a global media access provider with operations in four key regions: Australia and New Zealand, North America, EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa), and Asia. It was founded in 2003 by Tony Abrahams and Alex Jones, who was born deaf, and began trading on the ASX on September 15, 2020.

The company uses its AI-powered LEXI captioning solution to transcribe speech, making media accessible to all. It is now one of the world’s leading caption and translation providers, with monthly delivery of over 9 million minutes of captioned live and recorded media, according to its website.

Market cap: AU$147.9 million
Share price: AU$0.17

Bigtincan Holdings is a sales platform that uses AI to help companies improve their customers’ buying experience by making the process more efficient and personalised. Bigtincan’s list of partners includes Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL), Adobe (NASDAQ:ADBE), SalesForce (NYSE:CRM) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT). Its large language model, GenieAI, was launched in March 2023.

Bigtincan’s H1 fiscal year 2024 report revealed that GenieAI started generating revenue during the period, and the company reported positive earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), up 136 percent from the previous reporting period. On September 10, the company partnered with SambaNova, a company providing "the world's fastest AI platform," to enhance Bigtincan's SearchAI.