In Davos bubble, AI leaders see no real AI bubble

In Jan. 2026, the gap between the haves and the have-nots could hardly be more stark — even in AI world.

On the have-not side, there's OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Long the hype man for imminent digital superintelligence (aka AGI), Altman backtracked and said we're in an AI bubble last year. He's made odd deals to feed the money hog known as ChatGPT; subscriptions ain't paying the bills. Last week, Altman rolled out what in 2024 he called "the last resort" for the company — selling ads on ChatGPT. A popular LinkedIn post this week used an AI image of Altman out in the cold, begging for change with a self-mocking cardboard sign: "AGI = Ads Generate Income."

And then there are the haves in warm rooms in snowy Davos, Switzerland — where the weather report for the AI economy, from the annual World Economic Forum, is just peachy.

Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO, who rode the company to a $4 trillion valuation on the back of powerful GPU chip sales growth that hasn't quite slowed yet, flipped the script when asked about the AI bubble. "This is the largest infrastructure build-out in human history," Huang said of active and promised data center projects. "And so the AI bubble is, comes about because the investments are large. And the investments are large, because we have to build the infrastructure necessary for all of the layers of AI above it."

Huang wasn't denying the existence of a bubble, exactly — he just suggested it was a misreading of our current economic outlook. Just look at all that infrastructure coming down the pipe! Left unsaid was whether those massive projects would dry up if AI itself continues to not show returns on investment for regular businesses (especially if AI models like DeepSeek can be built with minimal data center usage, the opposite of what made Nvidia successful).

In Nvidia's telling, the tail is now wagging the dog. And the rest of Davos, a popular confab for billionaires, pretty much wagged along in agreement.

"I think there will be big failures, but I don't think we are in a bubble," said Larry Fink, CEO of Blackrock, a top tech investment firm. (Blackrock holds more than $200 billion in Nvidia stock.)

Also at Davos, one Nobel Prize-winning economist described what was currently happening in AI as a "rational bubble", comparing it favorably to the infamous tulip bulb panic of the 17th century. Why? Because with AI, insisted Peter Howitt, economics professor at Brown University, "there's something real out there."

Howitt didn't suggest what that real thing was, but insisted there would be a winner — and their arrival would herald the bursting of the bubble. "At some point, when it becomes a little clearer who the winners are going to be, the values of the other firms are going to start to fall, and that's when the crash will take place."

So who is that winner, other than Nvidia and its circular OpenAI deals? Microsoft, with its own favorable OpenAI deal, might be in a position to "win" the AI economy. Microsoft currently owns a 27 percent stake in the ChatGPT maker. If Altman can't keep the lights on long-term, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella could well ride in to the rescue and snap up OpenAI itself.

Nadella, on the surface, seemed just as optimistic about AI's future as the rest of the titans. And yet in his appearance, the Microsoft CEO also sounded a note of alarm. If the AI economy doesn't root itself in non-tech sectors, it will be a bubble — and soon.

"The real question in front of all of us is how do you ensure that the diffusion of AI happens, and happens fast," Nadella said. "For this not to be a bubble by definition, it requires that the benefits of this are much more evenly spread." (Nadella has been criticized by investors for too much AI infrastructure spending.)

So to summarize the view from the Davos bubble: We're not in an AI bubble, we're in a massive infrastructure investment that will benefit workers. Well, maybe we're in a rational bubble. But we will be in an irrational bubble if everyone doesn't get on board with the AI economy real soon, presumably by sending poor Sam Altman some ad dollars. Got that?