View: AI bubble is real and it will birth giants

“If we delivered a bad quarter, it is evidence there’s an AI bubble. If we delivered a great quarter, we are fuelling the AI bubble,” a dejected Jensen Huang told his employees recently, even as his company, Nvidia, delivered its astonishing, “bubble-bursting” quarterly results. Many watching this AI boom likely would have felt a similar mix of doubt, vertigo and exhilaration.

Nvidia’s quarterly profit jumped 245% in two years, pushing it to an unheard-of valuation of nearly $5 trillion. OpenAI is valued at $500 billion and is promising a $1 trillion IPO, with no sight of profits until 2030. “AI-washing”, or slapping an AI label on every piece of software, has become a shortcut to funding.