There’s a huge divide between how the world’s AI leaders view the transformative technology. Some foresee a huge jobs boom and a new era of economic activity. Others see the end of humanity.
Ray Dalio, famed investor and founder of Bridgewater Associates, says both optimists and pessimists are correct. He believes the technology will produce unprecedented productivity benefits, but also further entrench wealth inequalities—as well as driving a massive stock market bubble.
“There’s a process in which great new technologies are something that everybody wants to invest in because they’re going to change the world, and then they over-invest in them, and they create debt, and they go through a certain dynamic, in a sense, that creates a bubble, that creates a bust,” Dalio said in a new video for the World Economic Forum.
“So simultaneously it is going to be one of the biggest productivity-enhancing, changing-the-world forces, and also a bubble that is going to have devastating effects on many people as it works itself through this.”
Dalio’s argument isn’t without precedent: In the dotcom bubble, the Nasdaq rose 86% in 1999 alone. By October 2002, it had fallen 77% from its peak, with trillions wiped off the market. The web nonetheless turned out to be a transformative new medium.
That said, history tends to rhyme, rather than repeat itself. There are fundamental differences between the current investment cycle and previous bubbles, Citi Wealth’s head of economics, Conrad DeQuadros, said in a note last month: “Contrary to the corporate profit margin squeeze seen during prior investment bubbles, aggregate margins today are holding near all-time highs … U.S. corporations enter this investment cycle from a position of profitability and balance sheet strength.”
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, has suggested that parts of the AI sphere are in bubble territory, rather than the entire ecosystem. Dalio suggests something similar, saying that AI will lead to massive wealth for some.
“People who come up with great ideas to invent productive things receive capital that enables them to do that,” Dalio continued. “And then as a result of that, that produces very large differences in wealth. While a lot of people are benefiting from these miraculous, productivity-enhancing [technologies], most people are not benefiting adequately from that.”
The great wealth divide
“So the real question isn’t so much about AI as it is human nature,” added Dalio. “It’ll have enormous implications for wealth and opportunity differences. How are those going to be dealt with? These are the big questions of our time.”
Among the top names on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, many derive their wealth from tech companies currently investing billions in AI infrastructure and transformation.
Nine out of the top 10 on the list have built their fortune in tech. Leading the pack is Tesla and SpaceX’s Elon Musk, followed by Google co-founder Larry Page and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Their wealth is driven by the shares they hold in major companies, and those companies in turn buy services and invest in smaller companies, boosting the wealth of their founders. But there is a divide in share investment, too. The Federal Reserve monitors asset classes held by the U.S. population, and the bottom 50% of households held $0.37 trillion in corporate equities and mutual funds as of Q2 2026. By contrast, the top 0.1% held $16.15 trillion and the top 90% to 99% held $24 trillon.
Some AI leaders are signaling they want to share the profits: Nvidia founder Jensen Huang, for example, has said he’s open to tax ideas as a “great way for us to contribute back to society and the economy.”
