A constant buzzword you hear when you're in the stock market: "AI is a bubble."
Artificial Intelligence is often said to be a bubble, and in investment circles, the smile that accompanies that statement is often a forced one. It's not a denial of magic. No one is so naive as to believe that AI services will disappear or that they won't become a pillar of digital civilization. On the contrary, their usefulness is undeniable. The big question is not about the technology, but about its price.
And you know what? Maybe it is. But not in the sense that this whole thing about robots and smart software will disappear tomorrow. No, AI is here to stay, it will be everywhere, like the internet or electricity. The problem is not innovation, but the price we pay for it in the market today.
Here we enter the murky realm of gravity-defying valuations. After all, a bubble is not the moment when an innovation dies; it is simply the moment when the market reaches a state of delirium, valuing the promise of tomorrow at a value it cannot justify today. When earnings multiples stretch like ever-thinning elastic bands, you inevitably wonder: how much longer can this tension last?
At the center of this frenzy is, without a doubt, NVIDIA—the gold supplier, the one selling the “pickaxes and shovels” in the digital gold rush. They invest tirelessly, casting nets left and right across the AI ecosystem, and announcing financial triumph after triumph. They have managed to become a barometer of excitement, a company so essential that demand for their chips has become a kind of perpetual hunger.
To sustain this titanic status, their efforts are global and intense. Let's not forget the assiduous lobbying to keep the gates of the Chinese market open, a vital artery without which the growth story would suffer a serious fracture. All of these maneuvers are normal in a market economy, but they highlight the extraordinary pressure on the shoulders of a single company to justify a stellar valuation.
Yep, NVIDIA, that's the hero of the story. Or, rather, the guy who sells us the tools. They sell chips for a pittance, invest in absolutely everything that moves, and do laps of honor in China to sell them to others. They have good sales, they brag (rightly so), and we all have our eyes on them like a thermometer of AI fever.
But, not long ago, a piece of news came that sounded like a false note at the party: SoftBank sold its entire stake.
SoftBank is a big player. One that can smell from afar when a deal is ripe and ready to be picked—or when it’s about to go bad. When SoftBank packs up and walks away from the table, you can’t help but think, “Oh my God, they’ve seen something we haven’t.”
Such news isn’t a death sentence for AI, it’s a wake-up call. It shows us that some people see that the price of the dream has become far too high. It’s not that innovation is bad, it’s that it simply can’t grow at the rate it needs to to justify its current value.
The correction will come. Not as the end of the world, but as a cold shower of realism. And when it does, my hope is that I’ll be one of the few who had that safety net in place. Better to lose some of the potential gain than to lose absolutely everything to unbridled enthusiasm. It's just a waiting game, and the best way to play it is to not be the most enthusiastic person in the room.