AI's $920 Billion Gamble: Bubble or the Biggest Opportunity Yet?

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**Brett Rentmeester** (1:00)
How durable is this? Is there an overbuild like the tech bubble of the dot coms? That's going to more than double by the end of next year based on estimates to 920 billion. Can they all be wrong? You could get to a point somewhere in the future where the build out gets ahead of the demand.

**Maggie Lake** (1:21)
Hi, everyone, welcome to Wealthion, Maggie Lake. Joining me today is Brett Rentmeester, founder and managing director at WindRock Wealth Management. Hi, Brett, it's great to see you again.

**Brett Rentmeester** (1:30)
Nice to see you.

**Maggie Lake** (1:31)
Perfect timing because we are entering into earnings season, and there is a lot of concern about AI. I think a lot of anticipation, enthusiasm, concern, it's kind of all mixed together as people are trying to find out what's happening in this space. So we thought it would be good to sort of tackle it with you because I'm sure you're getting a lot of incoming from clients. Where are you on AI spending? It seems like it keeps accelerating, but how far can it go?

**Brett Rentmeester** (2:00)
Well, here are the numbers, Maggie. I think it's useful to start there. Back in 2023, if we base spending not on people doing AI subscriptions, but instead on data center spend or the so-called hyperscalers as a by-product of creating AI requires all this data compute, the hyperscalers as a group, the spend was about 156 billion in 2023 Last year in 2025, that went up to 443 billion, and that's going to more than double by the end of next year based on estimates to 920 billion. The numbers are huge and growing, and it's not like those are going to fall off because the backlogs are also huge.
Google Cloud reports a $460 billion backlog of orders, and Amazon AWS also Cloud Data Center, 360 billion. It seems like the skeptics are quieted down about, is the demand real? Now, the question is becoming, how durable is this? Maybe we have visibility for the next year or two, but is it going to keep ramping up? Is there a period where it flattens out, or is there an overbuild like the tech bubble of the dot coms?

**Maggie Lake** (3:15)
That's kind of the question. I think you just put your finger on it. I think that's exactly what people are worried about. Because I think that you understand, this is a wave of tech revolution, innovation.
It's intertwined with national security. There's all sorts of, we hear about the AI race, and I think everyone thinks it's real, but are we borrowing from the future? Is everyone just rapidly spending now, and all of a sudden, the bubble is going to burst? There's a lot of comparisons to 1999 and 2000 Does it feel that way to you?

**Brett Rentmeester** (3:48)
Not currently. It feels like it could develop into something like that. But I think there's a number of things here. First of all, just acknowledging, we're in the early innings of this.
Two years ago, your friends didn't know much about AI, and then they started using it as a Google search substitute, and now they're implementing it in their companies. We're in the early innings, and I think in early innings of technology innovations, things are volatile, things aren't certain. Nobody has a perfect crystal ball, and because of that, you get volatility, and I think there is always the risk that things go a little too far too fast. I think that happened with the so-called Meg 7 stocks, that the Microsofts and Amazons, etc.
Last year about this time, they rose to about 35% of the S&P 500 as a group, which is one of the largest concentrations in history. We were pretty cautious at that point, just because of that concentration, and since then, they've really lagged. Now, they may become winners again, but over the last year, they went a little too far too fast. That's always the risk at this point in the story.