- There are clear parallels between the AI boom and the dot-com bubble, tech investor Paul Wick says.
- But solid demand, strong earnings, and less mania make for a "healthier" backdrop, Wick said.
- Seligman's chief investor brushed off Michael Burry's worries but flagged some trends to watch.
The AI boom has shades of the dot-com bubble, but fears of an imminent crash and mass unemployment are overblown, a veteran tech investor says.
At the turn of this century, there was an explosion in dot-com startups being formed, and a huge infrastructure buildout with telecoms "aggressively" spending on wired and wireless networks, Paul Wick told Business Insider in an interview this week.
The chief investor of Seligman Investments — a group within Columbia Threadneedle Investments that manages over $40 billion of assets and comprises a hedge fund, a mutual fund, and a venture capital arm — said there were clear parallels between that period and the current boom in AI startups and data-center spending. He also noted that energy prices and interest rates jumped then as they've done this year.
But Wick noted there isn't the same IPO frenzy now, or the same "frenetic environment" where stocks soar fivefold or tenfold in a day. He also said that by late 2000, a slowdown in IT spending was being forecasted for 2001, whereas enterprise spending on AI remains strong and recent tech earnings have been robust.
Simply put, the situation seems "healthier" now than in 2000, he said.
Business Insider asked Wick about Michael Burry's warnings this year around AI. "The Big Short" investor has called out aggressive accounting, circular financing, hidden debt, and overinvestment in depreciating assets like microchips as reasons to be skeptical that the boom has legs.
Wick said that Burry, known for predicting and profiting from the collapse of the mid-2000s housing bubble, has been "early or downright wrong on many other things."
Burry has previously defended his track record, citing his correct predictions and sharing charts showing the timing of his market calls.
As for concerns about Nvidia's efforts to grow the AI ecosystem by investing in data center developers and software companies, Wick emphasized that the chipmaker is "extraordinarily profitable."
He cast doubt on whether Nvidia should spend its spare cash only on buybacks, rather than bolstering its customers, especially as several of the industry's biggest players are working to develop their own AI chips to reduce their reliance on Nvidia.
But he also flagged some industry trends to watch, including enterprise clients opting to use older models or build their own, and token pricing coming under pressure as users embrace open-source models, raising questions over the size of the market opportunity for the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic.
Navigating a new world
Wick weighed in on how a young person can get ahead in the AI era.
"It used to be that a degree in computer science was a ticket to success," he said.
A better option today might be to learn a trade, as there's "booming demand" for workers such as electricians and HVAC technicians, and they can make an "incredibly good living" without having to go to a four-year college, Wick said.
He also took aim at the "doom-and-gloom notion that AI is going to eviscerate demand" for human labor. He described that worry as a "little premature" as nobody knows for sure how AI will affect entry-level roles in the future, unemployment is yet to soar, and there's always inertia when it comes to businesses and consumers changing their behavior.