Ken Griffin Says We’re ‘Almost Certainly’ in an AI Bubble, Recalls How Past Bubbles Created Market Leaders for Decades: ‘I Just Wish I’d Kept My Amazon Stock’

Citadel’s CEO Ken Griffin said that investors are "almost certainly" in the middle of an AI bubble right now.

In an interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday at the Future of Global Markets Conference in New York, Griffin said, "Any radical transformation of our economy is generally intertwined with a bubble.”

The billionaire spoke about the valuation metrics of internet companies back in 1999-2000, referring to some of their business models as ‘fanciful’.

The Griffin said that bubbles are often “game changing” for the world and the companies that survive them become “market leaders for decades to come.”

"I just wish I’d kept my Amazon stock in that moment," he said, calling the internet a “great bubble.”

Speaking about the chip stocks sell-off in the last week, Griffin said everyone just blames hedge fund “deleveraging.” He added, “the reason that people love that answer is it actually washes your hands of accountability.”

Experts Warn of AI Bubble

Earlier this month, Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, described AI as a classic bubble. “I think we’re close to that,” Dalio said of the bursting point at the Forbes Global CEO Conference in Singapore. Dalio pointed to the large amount of debt being raised to fund AI investment as the major risk for the bubble’s burst.

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT), Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ: META) and Oracle Corp. (NYSE: ORCL) issued nearly $200 billion of investment-grade debt during the first half of 2026, almost twice their issuance during the entire 2025, according to iShares.

However, Visser, head of AI Macro Nexus Research at 22V Research, calls a mismatch in demand and supply the primary reason behind a bubble and not valuation. “The demand side is coming from agents,” He said, while adding that he expects their number to grow from thousands today to billions next year.

Meanwhile, economist Paul Krugman said the AI boom is crowding out investment elsewhere in the economy. He pointed to this phenomenon as something the dot-com boom didn’t do, and that the effect is already measurable whether or not it is in a bubble. Unlike technological unemployment or a burst bubble risk, he said, "this isn’t a hypothetical risk."

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