Bubble? Son says: try harder
SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son showed up at the company’s annual event in Tokyo and did not exactly tiptoe around the AI skeptics. He called bubble warnings “foolish” and “backward,” arguing that the AI wave is still in the early innings and could transform roughly 20% of global GDP by 2040.
The $5 trillion elephant in the room
Son’s pitch is basically this: AI won’t just be another software upgrade. It’ll need a mountain of capital — nearly $5 trillion a year, by his estimate — for data centers, chips, energy, and all the plumbing that makes the digital robot brain go brrr.
That matters because the Nvidia trade has become the poster child for the whole AI arms race. When people argue about Nvidia’s valuation, they’re really arguing about whether this spending cycle is a once-in-a-generation platform shift or a very expensive detour.
Same movie, different era?
Son also said the current AI revolution is “50x bigger” than the dot-com boom and compared the inevitable pullbacks to the kind of crash that, in hindsight, created giant long-term winners. In other words: yes, there may be a correction. No, he doesn’t think that means the party is over.
- Bulls hear: huge runway, more infrastructure, more demand.
- Bears hear: a lot of money chasing a lot of hype.
- Investors hear: strap in, because AI is still the market’s favorite argument.
Big picture: Whether Son is right or just fabulously early, the AI trade clearly isn’t done making people sweaty. If you own Nvidia, this is the kind of headline that keeps the “how big can this get?” debate very much alive.