Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell doesn’t think the AI boom is just another dotcom bubble. In fact, he made that distinction clear on Wednesday, arguing that the current wave of AI investment is based on profitable firms and real economic activity, not speculative wealth.
“I won’t get into specific names,” Powell told reporters after the Fed’s policy meeting, “but they do have profits.”
“These companies … actually have business models and revenue and things like that. So it’s really a different thing” from the dot-com bubble, he added.
The comments represent what appears to be Powell’s most direct acknowledgment yet that the corporate creation of artificial intelligence, which includes hundreds of billions of dollars in data center and semiconductor investments, has become the real engine of U.S. growth.
Powell emphasized that the explosion in AI spending is not driven by monetary policy or cheap money.
“I don’t think interest rates are a big part of the story of artificial intelligence or the data center,” he said. “It’s based on long-term assessments that this is an area where there’s going to be a lot of investment and it’s going to lead to productivity gains.”
The remark contradicts one market narrative that easing financial conditions could fuel a tech asset bubble. Instead, Powell suggested that the construction of artificial intelligence is more structural in nature: a bet on the long-term transformation of work. The scale is unprecedented, from Nvidia, which plans to generate half a trillion dollars in revenue, to the multihundred-billion-dollar capital spending plans of Microsoft and Alphabet. But according to Powell, it’s also valid.
Goldman Sachs agrees. In a research note titled “Artificial Intelligence Spending Boom Not Too Big,” US Chief Economist Joseph Briggs argued that “expected levels of investment are sustainable, although the ultimate AI winners remain less clear.”
Briggs and his team estimate that the productivity unlocked by AI could be worth $8 trillion in current value to the US economy and potentially reach $19 trillion in high-end scenarios.
“We are not concerned about the overall investment in artificial intelligence,” the Goldman team wrote. “Investment in artificial intelligence as a share of US GDP is lower today (<1%) than in previous great technology cycles (2%–5%)". In other words, there's still plenty of room to run.
Powell’s framing echoes this sentiment: the AI race, while frothy at times, is financed largely by corporate cash flow, not speculative debt.
Powell noted that the investment wave is reflected in the real sector of the economy. “It’s the investment we’re getting in hardware and all those things that go into building data centers and powering artificial intelligence,” he said. “Obviously, this is one of the main sources of economic growth.”