Former Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC) CEO Pat Gelsinger has said the current wave of artificial intelligence investment and vendor financing bears similarities to the early internet boom — but predicted real technological transformation before the end of the decade.

Gelsinger: AI Cycle Resembles Early Internet's Exponential Hype

In a conversation with The Business of Platforms Network earlier this month, Gelsinger reflected on the frenzied pace of AI spending, particularly in light of vendor financing deals and aggressive demand guarantees by major chipmakers and data center firms.

"We've seen this before," Gelsinger said. "Look at all the optical companies in the early days of the internet. Everything was up and to the right… exponential growth for unlimited periods of time."

He cautioned that while that 10-year period was "stunning," it didn't sustain for decades.

"It was a stunning 10 years, but it didn't extrapolate to 30 years," he said, drawing parallels between today's AI boom and the dot-com era's unchecked optimism.

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Predicts ‘Real Shift' In AI Efficiency By End Of The Decade

Despite acknowledging the hype, Gelsinger expressed optimism about the sector's underlying innovation. 

"I see fundamentally no change for the next two, three, four years," he said. "But by the end of the decade, some of these transformational technologies will be at scale. I do see a real shift."

He identified key breakthroughs on the horizon, particularly in inferencing cost, inferencing performance and power consumption — factors he described as critical to enabling broad AI deployment worldwide.

AI Spending Surge And Bubble Debate

Gelsinger's comments arrive amid growing debate over whether the AI investment surge mirrors the early 2000s dot-com bubble. 

On Thursday, market commentators like The Kobeissi Letter said that AI compute demand is now growing "at over two times the rate of Moore's Law," requiring $500 billion in annual data center investment through 2030.

Goldman Sachs has also argued the current cycle is underpinned by real adoption and revenue growth — not speculation.

On the other hand, last month, GQG Partners warned of "dotcom-era overvaluation" across tech stocks.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos and Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg have all indicated that the market could be overheating.

However, some of them have also admitted that AI expansion might be an exception, provided demand for increasingly capable models keeps rising annually.

Intel scores highly in Benzinga’s Edge Stock Rankings for Momentum and demonstrates strong price performance across short, medium and long-term horizons. See a full breakdown of the stock, including comparisons with its peers and competitors.

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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.

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