The world’s most accomplished tech founders and business leaders are betting hundreds of billions on AI with extraordinary conviction. Meanwhile much of the investing world thinks they’re making a massive mistake. The irony is hard to ignore. An investment industry where very few have historically managed to beat a passive index is now questioning the judgment of the people building the technology and running the businesses that will put it to work. Maybe the investors are right. Maybe the builders are. But I can’t remember a time when the stakes were this high and the two sides saw the future so differently.

Been obsessed with the stock market since I was a teenager. Have traded through the dotcom bubble, the financial crisis and just about every market mania since. But I’ve never seen anything like the skepticism surrounding AI. Not even close. Every time one bubble narrative falls apart a new one takes its place. Rumors become headlines. Misleading data goes viral. Claims that could be debunked with 5 minutes of research get repeated by major media outlets, influential investors and Wall Street analysts. It’s relentless and honestly pretty fascinating to watch. Of course there will be spectacular failures and massive wealth destruction along the way. That’s what happens during technological revolutions. But I’ve never witnessed this much effort to convince the world that something so transformative is actually one giant speculative bubble destined to take the entire economy down with it. I understand why AI scares people. What I find harder to understand is why so many investors seem to be rooting for it to fail.