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With hundreds of billions of dollars still flowing into the tech industry, it\u2019s becoming harder and harder to deny the reality that the US economy is enmeshed in a financial bubble<\/a> of incredible proportions. As recent polls<\/a> have shown, the majority of Americans don\u2019t only agree that there is an AI bubble, they\u2019re increasingly concerned about it as well.<\/p>\n One man who isn\u2019t swayed is Japan\u2019s richest investment mogul, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son. Speaking at his company\u2019s annual corporate conference in Tokyo, Son groused that any talk of an AI bubble is \u201cabsurd,\u201d adding that he\u2019s willing to waste trillions of dollars a year for decades if that\u2019s what it takes to make AI a financial success<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cAsking if AI is a bubble is absurd. I don\u2019t think people who ask that \u200cquestion know \u2060what AI is about,\u201d Son said to conference attendees, as Reuters reported<\/a>. \u201cEvery year $5 trillion, or 800 trillion yen, you might \u200bthink that\u2019s a lie, but I am confident that\u2019s what it will cost.\u201d<\/p>\n Son has previously said<\/a> he thinks it\u2019s \u201cblasphemy against AI if you say it\u2019s a bubble,\u201d claiming that the tech\u2019s \u201cpotential will be unlocked.\u201d<\/p>\n But whether the tech industry can ever make AI financially viable is a particularly sensitive issue for SoftBank. The investment bank has lavished ChatGPT maker OpenAI with nearly $65 billion so-far<\/a>, a spend so enormous that it forced major credit ratings agencies to downgrade SoftBank\u2019s standing over the last few months.<\/p>\n As S&P Global\u2019s analysts wrote when they downgraded SoftBank\u2019s outlook<\/a> from \u201cneutral\u201d to \u201cnegative\u201d in March, the \u201cliquidity of SoftBank Group\u2019s investment portfolio will worsen because OpenAI now accounts for a bigger share of it.\u201d<\/p>\n In particular, S&P warned against the exact path CEO Son seems to be doubling down on. <\/p>\n \u201cThe additional investment will further reduce SoftBank Group\u2019s financial capacity, in our view,\u201d S&P\u2019s credit report explained. \u201cWe estimate that the additional investment in OpenAI will knock nearly four percentage points onto the company\u2019s [loan-to-value] ratio, worsening this key financial metric.\u201d<\/p>\n These invectives evidently haven\u2019t spooked Son, who once predicted<\/a> that AI superintelligence would exist by 2035. <\/p>\n Now, he\u2019s adding five years to that prediction: \u201cThe business model will be viable because by 2040,\u201d Son said, \u201cif AI revenue \u200bmakes up 20 percent of global GDP, spending 800 trillion yen a year is a rounding error.\u201d<\/p>\n