Companies are adding "AI" to their name and getting +22-32% stock returns just from the announcement.

A new paper studied 58 such cases since 2021.

The sample: 30 companies that simply renamed themselves to include "AI" without any merger or acquisition. Average age 4 years, median assets $23 million, most of them unprofitable.

A sneaker company (Allbirds) renamed itself "NewBird AI" to sell AI chips. It went up 582% in one day. A karaoke machine company became an "AI logistics platform". Bitcoin miners rebranded as AI training infrastructure.

The announcement effect is real and statistically robust. Median return around the announcement is +8-9%, even after removing outliers.

But here is the thing. When you adjust for the fact that these are small high-beta tech stocks riding the NASDAQ rally, the post-announcement drift disappears completely. The market pays a premium for the label, then nothing happens.

The authors compared this to the dot-com era. In 2001, companies that added ".com" to their name got +74% returns. In 2020, blockchain name changes produced about +32%. Now AI is running the same playbook.

Artificial Intelligence or Artificial Hype? Evidence from Corporate Name Changes, Hongcheng Wang
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6736481