“When Bubbles Happen…”: Sam Altman Says AI Hype Compares To Dot Com Boom Before 2000 Crash

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says investor enthusiasm for artificial intelligence may already look like a bubble., according to CNBC.

“Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? My opinion is yes. Is AI the most important thing to happen in a very long time? My opinion is also yes,” he told reporters last week. “When bubbles happen, smart people get overexcited about a kernel of truth.”

Altman compared the surge in AI spending to the dot-com boom of the 1990s, when hype drove valuations before the Nasdaq lost nearly 80% of its value.

He isn’t alone. Alibaba co-founder Joe Tsai, Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio, and Apollo Global Management economist Torsten Slok have issued similar warnings. Slok recently argued the AI boom could be “bigger than the internet bubble,” with today’s market leaders more overvalued than those in the 1990s.

Not all analysts agree. Ray Wang of Futurum Group said Monday that “from the perspective of broader investment in AI and semiconductors… I don’t see it as a bubble. The fundamentals across the supply chain remain strong.” Still, he noted “an increasing amount of speculative capital” chasing weaker companies.

CNBC writes that investor concern has grown alongside rising competition. Earlier this year, Chinese start-up DeepSeek claimed to train a cutting-edge model for under $6 million, far below the billions spent by U.S. giants like OpenAI—though those claims remain disputed.

Altman, meanwhile, has acknowledged challenges at OpenAI. He told CNBC the company is on track for $20 billion in annual recurring revenue but remains unprofitable. The rollout of its GPT-5 model drew mixed reviews, forcing OpenAI to restore GPT-4 access for paying users.

He has also begun questioning whether “artificial general intelligence” remains a useful term, saying it may be losing relevance despite earlier predictions it could arrive in the “reasonably close-ish future.”

Investor faith, however, hasn’t wavered. OpenAI is preparing a $6 billion stock sale valuing the firm at roughly $500 billion, just months after raising $40 billion at a $300 billion valuation—the largest private tech round ever.

Looking ahead, Altman said OpenAI could spend “trillions of dollars” on data centers, hinted at expansion into consumer hardware and brain-computer interfaces, and even suggested buying Chrome if regulators forced Google to sell.

Asked if he’d still be OpenAI’s CEO in three years, he replied: “I mean, maybe an AI is in three years. That’s a long time.”