Business and AI leaders are getting nervous about a bubble

It turns out that everyone thinks there is an AI bubble.

According to a CNBC report, top tech executives are worried about an AI bubble ruining their business.

Like other infamous bubbles – the dotcom bubble, the cryptocurrency bubble, and the housing bubble of the 2000s – an AI bubble could cause massive disruption across the entire economy. A bubble occurs when the price of an asset exceeds its true value, usually because investors get too excited. And investors were very excited about AI.

A recent report from Stanford University estimates that investment in AI reached $109.1 billion in the United States in 2024. This is 12 times higher than China’s investment and 24 times higher than the United Kingdom’s investment.

CNBC reported that Goldman Sachs’ David Solomon, Morgan Stanley’s Ted Pick, investor Michael Burry and Picsart CEO Hovhannes Avoyan all worry about a potential AI bubble. In fact, even some AI leaders are getting nervous.

“I think the valuations are quite exaggerated here and there, and I think there are signs of a bubble on the horizon,” Jarek Kutylowski, CEO of German AI company DeepL, told CNBC.

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard about a potential AI bubble. In August, OpenAI’s Sam Altman spoke about his own AI bubble fears to a small group of journalists, including The Verge’s Alex Heath, at a dinner in San Francisco.

“When bubbles arise, smart people get overexcited by a kernel of truth,” Altman told reporters. “If you look at most bubbles in history, like the tech bubble, there was a reality. Technology was really big. The Internet was a really big deal. People were overexcited. Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? My opinion is yes. Is AI the most important thing in a very long time? My opinion is also yes.”