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In Davos, tech execs sound more bullish than ever. Four things we learned about AI. In Davos, tech execs sound more bullish than ever. Four things we learned about AI.

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In Davos, tech execs sound more bullish than ever. Four things we learned about AI. – Crypto News

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Demand Check. Hi everyone. This week, investors and world leaders are preoccupied with geopolitical uncertainty and the prospect of a new trade war with Europe over the sovereignty of Greenland. The talk has led to market volatility and dominated the discussions at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

But it’s generally wise for investors to separate the macro noise from their portfolios. Instead, it’s best to focus on the updates from Davos about the buildout of AI infrastructure. Top tech CEOs and executives emphasized that underlying fundamentals remain strong.

Here are four key things we’ve learned from speeches and interviews at this week’s Davos meeting:

What AI Bubble? Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says the AI buildout is still in the early innings. The AI trend “has started the largest infrastructure buildout in human history,” he said Wednesday at Davos. He added that the world is just a few hundred billion dollars into what will eventually be trillions of dollars spent on AI.

Huang also pushed back on the AI bubble narrative. He cited rising rental prices for Nvidia GPUs, even those that are two generations old. “One good test on the AI bubble is to recognize that Nvidia now has millions of GPUs in the cloud,” Huang said. “If you try to rent an Nvidia GPU these days, it is so incredibly hard. The spot price of GPU rentals is going up.”

AI Demand Is Still Incredibly Strong. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told CNBC in an interview from Davos that demand for AI compute resources remains high. “It is so unprecedented how much compute is being consumed right now,” Jassy said. Amazon Web Services is the world’s largest provider of cloud computing services serving start-ups and corporations.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella added that he is growing more positive that AI will be a beneficial force for society. “I’m much more confident that this is a technology that will in fact build on the rails of cloud and mobile, diffuse faster, and bend the productivity curve,” Nadella said.

Job Creation. Huang also argued against the idea that AI will lead to large job losses. The executive cited all the construction jobs needed to build the infrastructure. He also noted what’s happened in the radiology space: As AI has made advances in image analysis, more radiologists have been hired as they spend more time diagnosing diseases and with patients.

Enterprise Ramp. OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar told CNBC her company’s enterprise business is growing rapidly and making major strides inside corporations. She said more than one million businesses already use the company’s tools and predicted that by year end OpenAI’s business mix would shift to 50% consumer and 50% enterprise from 70% and 30% one year ago.

All this being said, if the U.S. gets involved in a protracted trade war with Europe, the market may drop further, just like early last year when Trump ratcheted up triple digit tariffs on China.

But the pattern has been for the Trump administration to pull back on any big selloff. At that point, the market has generally rebounded thanks to strong fundamentals. When it comes to AI, those fundamentals sound as strong as ever.

Write to Tae Kim at tae.kim@barrons.com or follow him on X at @firstadopter.

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