AI is not a bubble

AI already accounts for more than 60% of global investment in startups, according to a report by PwC and South Summit collected by ARA a few days ago. In 2022 it was 30%. By 2025, two out of every three dollars in global venture capital will go to artificial intelligence companies. As always when money runs faster than caution, the magic word appears: bubble.Well, I don't see it that way. The fact that many AI companies have to disappear doesn't mean AI is a bubble: it means we are facing a technological race. And in a technological race, not everyone wins. Few win. Very few. The rest are left behind.It happened with the internet. It happened with mobile applications. It happened with social networks. It happened with electronic commerce. From each wave, two, three, or four giants emerge. Behind them remain thousands of dead projects, burnt investors, exaggerated promises, and PowerPoint presentations. In the case of the dot-com bubble, the problem is that there were approaches that never generated any value nor were they a business.But no one would say today that the internet did not generate value. No one would say that the mobile phone did not change the economy. No one would say that e-commerce was smoke. There was excess. There was naivety. There were losses. But there was also real transformation.With artificial intelligence, something similar happens. 95% of start-ups will lose their investors' money. Perhaps even more. Many applications will have no market. But this does not turn the phenomenon into fiction.A bubble appears when the price completely separates from value. When it is bought only because tomorrow someone will buy it at a higher price. When there isn't enough business below to justify the investment. In AI there will indeed be business. A lot. The question is who will capture it.Venture capital funds know this perfectly. They don't invest thinking they will get it right: they invest accepting that they will lose in almost all investments. They look for one. The one that multiplies by a hundred, by two hundred, or by a thousand. This single investment pays for the entire previous graveyard.It's the logic of the gold rush. There are thousands running to the mountain. Most find nothing. Some sell shovels. A few find a vein. And these, who are few, explain the stampede. But there is gold. What happens is that there isn't enough for everyone.That's why it's important not to confuse two different things: that a technology generates value and that everyone who invests in it makes money. AI will be a brutal concentration of profits in a few hands. AI is not smoke. It is a technology that is already entering companies, offices, factories, hospitals, banks, and administrations. Another thing is that many are paying the entrance fee for a party where there will be neither drinks nor food for everyone.