An artificial intelligence announcement sends an obscure staff-recruitment stock on a wild ride

• Staffing 360 Solutions announced a deal with ActivateStaff to expand its artificial intelligence capabilities Tuesday.
• Shares of Staffing 360 surged nearly 25% on the news but then tumbled roughly 9% later in the day.

Shares of employee-recruitment firm Staffing 360 traded 9% lower Tuesday after seeing a roughly 25% surge following an announcement involving artificial intelligence.

The company, which facilitates headcount strategies for organizations in the US and UK, announced a new deal with ActivateStaff to expand its AI capabilities.

Staffing 360 CEO Brendan Flood noted the company's Headway unit has competed in "markets centered around flexibility and transparency through the use of artificial intelligence."

The move follows a recent pattern of AI-related stocks names seeing heightened volatility. The hype surrounding OpenAI's ChatGPT has already sent several larger artificial intelligence stocks soaring since the chatbot's launch on November 30. Even some small-cap AI stocks have seen massive rallies too.

For example, shares of SoundHoundAI extended gains on Tuesday, bringing its rally over the past month to 300%. Meanwhile, bigger tech firm C3.ai has climbed about 129% year-to-date as investors look to capitalize on the bot hype.

The trend's been catalyzed by the meteoric rise of ChatGPT, which has reportedly become the fastest consumer product to reach 100 million users. And parent company OpenAI recently rolled out a premium subscription that costs $20 per month. Last month, Microsoft invested $10 billion into OpenAI.

Meanwhile, on Monday Google announced a new competitor for ChatGPT, called Bard. The technology is powered by LaMDA, a large language model Google unveiled in May 2021.

Chinese tech giant Baidu also said it's readying an answer to ChatGPT. The stock jumped more than 15%, marking its steepest surge since March.