Wall Street experts: AI boom is a bubble

A number of experts, including David Rosenberg and analysts from Wall Street banks, including Bank of America, expressed their opinion about the growth of artificial intelligence (AI), comparing it to the «dotcom bubble» that burst in 2000 and caused the global financial crisis.

The growth of AI-related stocks has surprised even experienced market players, and the exciting speed of this growth and investor interest in AI are causing concerns.

Since the beginning of the year, the Nasdaq 100 technology index has grown by 39%, mainly due to the massive growth in shares of AI-related companies such as Nvidia, Alphabet and Microsoft. Nvidia shares have risen by 192%, which may indicate their possible revaluation.

However, not all experts share a pessimistic view and do not believe that the AI boom has reached a critical point.

1. Michael Hartnett, director of information technology at BofA Global Research, compared the current situation to the so-called «baby bubble». He noted that any «bubble» inflated by useful things like the Internet, or by wrong things, such as housing prices, always starts with "cheap money" and ends with an increase in the interest rate of the US Federal Reserve.

2. James Penny, IT director at TAM Asset Management, believes that companies that are not even actively using AI are witnessing an increase in the value of their shares, which is very similar to an inflating «bubble».

3. Art Kashin from UBS also sees AI as a catalyst for a new version of the «dotcom bubble», since everything related to this area will have an impact, ranging from new drugs to weather forecasts.

4. David Rosenberg, an economist at Rosenberg Research, also does not see a significant difference between the current corporate fanaticism around AI and what happened during the «dotcom bubble», when each company satisfied the appetite of investors with news about its plans to integrate the Internet or simply adding «.com» to the name.

5. Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities strongly disagrees with the claims that tech stocks are on the verge of a «bubble» similar to dot-com or on the verge of collapse. He predicts a repeat of the success of 1995, when the Internet became popular.

1. Jeremy Siegel, a professor at the Wharton School of Finance, also does not consider the situation around AI to be a «bubble». According to him, during the dot-com era, companies without profits received huge valuations.