The AI boom helped make the world’s 500 wealthiest people $2.2 trillion richer in 2025. To Bill Gurley, one of Silicon Valley’s sage investors and a general partner at Benchmark, those astronomical gains in wealth are a sign of an inflating AI bubble that is bound to pop.
The AI boom is following the pattern of other eras of technological growth, in which early gains for some tech firms have sparked a wave of spending that will ultimately be unsustainable for dozens of companies, Gurley said in an CNBC interview on Monday. Companies will soon have to curtail their spending and revise their valuations, or otherwise risk failing.
