Tech investors have seen AI valuations surge to stratospheric heights since late 2022, as artificial intelligence became the hottest theme in both private and public markets. Yet this excitement has been coupled with volatility – exemplified by events like the “DeepSeek scare” in early 2025 that briefly sent tech shares plummeting.
In this context, Aventis Advisors developed the Aventis AI Index to bring clarity on how public markets are pricing AI exposure across the entire value chain. This comprehensive, equal-weighted index tracks companies spanning from energy and infrastructure to chipmakers and EDA software, offering a data-driven view into where value is accruing in the AI ecosystem.
Why Aventis Created an AI Index
Aventis built the AI Valuations Index as a benchmark for AI exposure in public equities – essentially to answer which companies and sectors the stock market sees as winners in the AI boom, and how those companies are being valued.
In the past two years, AI has evolved from a niche topic to a broad-based economic force, lifting the valuations of everything from semiconductor manufacturers to data center landlords. This frenzy left many observers guessing how much of the “AI narrative” was baked into stock prices. By assembling a dedicated index, Aventis aimed to provide much-needed clarity on how public markets price AI across the value chain – from the most obvious plays (like AI chip providers) to more second-order beneficiaries (such as power utilities and construction firms that enable AI infrastructure).
We defined “AI exposure” very broadly to capture the full value chain of AI. Rather than focusing only on pure-play AI software companies (of which very few are public), the index spans “any company across the AI value chain, from energy supply to data centers and cooling systems to EDA software, chip production, and AI applications”.
By late June 2025, we selected 137 companies as AI-related public companies. This broad inclusion is deliberate – as AI reshapes industries, even companies in power generation, HVAC, or electronic manufacturing services (EMS) can become critical “AI plays.” The Aventis index shines a spotlight on all these players so founders and investors can see where public markets believe the value in AI truly lies.
How the Aventis AI Valuations Index Was Built: A DeepSeek Stress Test
To assemble the index, we took a novel approach: rather than pre-judging which companies are “AI companies,” we first let the market itself identify AI exposure via a real-world stress test.
We looked at publicly traded companies worth over $1 billion on US/UK exchanges whose stock price dropped more than 5% in the wake of DeepSeek’s January 27, 2025 research release.
This event – the launch of DeepSeek-R1, a cutting-edge AI model – served as a litmus test for investor perceptions. DeepSeek-R1 was a “cheaper AI model” seen as a threat to closed or infrastructure-heavy models, and its debut rattled markets.
In other words, if a company’s stock sold off sharply on the “DeepSeek scare”, it signaled that investors believed that company had significant AI exposure or dependence.
We manually reviewed the companies that dropped more than 5% and selected 137 companies as AI-related public companies for the index.
The Aventis AI Valuations Index is structured as an equal-weighted index, deliberately designed to provide a more balanced and representative view of the AI ecosystem. Unlike market-cap weighted indices, which are often dominated by a handful of mega-cap firms like NVIDIA, this index gives equal importance to each constituent
AI Index Performance Overview: AI Stocks Soar
From its base date of November 30, 2022 (index value = 100), the Aventis AI Index has skyrocketed by +166% as of June 30, 2025. In less than three years, the basket of AI-exposed public companies gained significantly in value – vastly outpacing the broader equity market. For context, the S&P 500 was up on the order of tens of percent over a similar period, making the AI cohort’s performance truly extraordinary.
This run-up underscores how dramatically investor sentiment shifted in favor of anything related to AI, especially following the late-2022 breakthroughs in generative AI that set off an arms race in tech. Interestingly, that DeepSeek-driven drawdown (when many AI stocks sold off on fears of a cheaper model undercutting incumbents) proved to be a temporary shakeout. The index has since fully recovered those losses.
Beyond the Mega-Caps: Broader Rally and Rebound
While NVIDIA and chipmakers grab headlines, it’s important to note that many other AI-exposed sectors have also delivered spectacular gains, in some cases even outpacing NVIDIA in percentage terms.
The breakdown reveals that infrastructure-heavy verticals are driving the index’s gains. Data center construction, electronics manufacturing services, and HVAC suppliers have delivered the highest equal-weighted returns in the index.
Notably, these enabling sectors have even outpaced core technology segments such as chip providers and cloud services, underscoring a significant market re-rating of the industries that underpin AI’s expansion. This trend highlights that second-order infrastructure enablers – firms building and servicing the physical backbone of AI – have captured substantial upside, not just the well-known chipmakers. While NVIDIA has grown an impressive 833%, most other chipmakers did not benefit equally from the GPU goldrush
Indeed, some of the top-performing stocks in the index hail from these “picks-and-shovels” niches: for example, contract manufacturer Celestica has surged +1,267%, building-systems specialist Limbach Holdings +1,069%, and infrastructure firm ASC +857%, all far exceeding the gains of mega-cap NVIDIA.
Download the full report on the left for a deep dive into the broader rally beyond mega-cap tech, including detailed breakdowns of groups, top constituents, and the infrastructure enablers driving outsized AI-related gains
Conclusion
The Aventis AI Valuations Index offers a unique, data-rich perspective on where value is accruing in the AI economy. AI’s value chain is broader (and deeper) than many realize.
Public markets have rapidly priced in the transformative potential of AI, but in doing so they have favored the foundational layers of the stack. The infrastructure, such as chips, cloud, power, cooling, is enjoying the narrative and the increased spending, whereas the application layer must still prove it can lock in durable value.
For tech founders and investors, this may suggest calibrating strategies and expectations: aligning with the “picks and shovels” of AI can yield outsized returns, while building purely on the application front may require exceptional execution or differentiation to attract comparable valuation multiples.
About Aventis Advisors
Aventis Advisors is an M&A advisor focusing on AI, technology and growth companies. We believe the world would be better off with fewer (but better quality) M&A deals done at the right moment for the company and its owners. Our goal is to provide honest, insight-driven advice, clearly laying out all the options for our clients – including the one to keep the status quo.
Get in touch with us to discuss how much your business could be worth and how to maximize the valuation.
