Call it an artificial intelligence boom, artificial intelligence frenzy, or artificial intelligence revolution – one thing appears to be certain these days – it shows no signs of slowing down.
Contrary to the skepticism last year and belief by some analysts that the "AI bubble" is there and that it might burst just any time, all developments in recent months reveal that this is not the case, at least for now.
Spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure, pledges, and plans continues at full speed, and it is even visible that this is spreading beyond the U.S. to Asia and Europe. The recent rally in tech shares in countries such as South Korea and Japan is just proof of this.
Alongside, leading U.S. startups are proceeding with their plans to go public this year, while old players like Alphabet's Google are also looking for ways to double down on AI spending.
On Monday, although speculated and widely expected, Claude-maker Anthropic surprised by confirming it confidentially applied to the regulator for an initial public offering (IPO), doing so before its long-term rival OpenAI.
Analysts point out that this IPO, in tandem with that of SpaceX and potentially OpenAI, would be a game-changer for Wall Street and are even comparing it to the early days of the Internet era, when many companies pursued similar endeavors, only in the end for some of them to become actual tech giants, such as Amazon.
At the same time, these public offerings can be seen as a barometer of the actual interest of large-scale and retail investors and the real potential of the AI industry. When public, these companies will have to be transparent over their finances, expenditures, and earnings, which would move the initial stage of commercial AI into the next phase – financial and palpable.
AI revolution '50x bigger' than the dot-com boom
Recent days have also seen a major pledge for spending on AI infrastructure of Japan's tech investor SoftBank, whose chief, Masayoshi Son, said on Monday that the "AI revolution is 50 times bigger than the dot-com revolution in the 2000s."
"AI will be, this is the beginning, and the future of the profit and growth opportunities is tremendous," Son told CNBC after the company, now Japan's most valuable, announced over the weekend plans for a 75 billion-euro ($87 billion) investment to build AI infrastructure in France.
SoftBank, which holds 11% stake in OpenAI, appears to be an early winner of the current boom as it managed to dethrone automaker Toyota and become the company with the largest market capitalization in Japan, evidencing just once again how strongly the rise of tech firms amid the artificial intelligence extravaganza swayed stock markets across the world.
The case of SoftBank followed a similar case in South Korea, where Samsung, on the back of unprecedented demand for its chips in the latest quarter, managed to cross $1 trillion in valuation, emerging only as the second company after TSMC in Asia to achieve it.
Similarly, South Korea's SK hynix and U.S. chipmaker Micron both joined the $1 trillion club last week on an AI-driven rally.
Asia rally
Interestingly, the rally was particulary intensive in the Asian markets over the past couple of weeks despite the concerns over energy prices and the U.S. and Israel's war with Iran.
However, the age of AI, which brought unseen profits for Big Tech companies in the U.S. and has propelled chipmaker Nvidia as the leader of the new age, has also raised a sense of inequality, with some workers pushing to gain from the AI pie.
In a rare example, complaining that soaring profits do not reflect on the salaries, Samsung union workers managed recently to secure hefty bonuses to avert a major strike, which threatened crippling of the production of the major contributor to the Korean economy.
Under the agreement, around 78,000 employees will each be eligible to receive a bonus of roughly $370,000 this year, based on a market estimate of annual operating profit, media reports said. The agreement, mediated by South Korea’s government, means Samsung will set aside 10.5% of operating profits at its semiconductor division to pay special bonuses to its chip workers, according to The Guardian.
The case represents a pioneering legal framework in regulating profit-sharing, potentially serving as a precedent.
Among others, some of the mentioned companies, including Anthropic, just recently released a new Opus model, while Google also last month debuted its AI agent called Gemini Spark, which reflects a real-time shift to more agentic AI.
Nvidia on Monday also presented its new "superchip" RTX Spark tailored for personal computers and would be used by top makers including Dell, Lenovo, Asus and HP, bringing the AI capabilities into the PC domain, according to the company. Similarly, the company earlier announced a massive $150 billion investment in Taiwan, the center of global chip production.
The unveiling of the new chip by its boss, Jensen Huang, is seen as an indicator of a long-term growth strategy beyond supplies for chip-hungry data centers and tech heavyweights.
All this, despite temporary volatilities or critical moments, such was the release of DeepSeek's model, clearly shows that AI is becoming an integrated and central part of the strategies of all major companies in the broader technology field, whether new or old ones. And still, with the bumps on the way, strong rivalry, ethical and job concerns, it looks like this momentum is set to carry on.