While the share price of AI chip and processor manufacturers typically make headlines, in the last two weeks, US networking and compute vendor Lumen Technologies (formerly CenturyLink) has been the AI favorite. This may be a sign of investors pursuing safer, more tangible AI-related investments, as opposed to lofty bets on AI-startups. In this case, the growth in Lumen’s share price is pinned to $5 billion worth of AI-related contracts that Lumen announced this month. As a result of the new contracts and other promising news, Lumen shares rose 299% in the last month. The firm spent 2023 selling assets and announcing job cuts. Last year it shut down its Content Delivery Network (CDN) business and sold its customer contracts…