Future is AI, but returns may not be immediate

Every few decades a new technology arrives, which promises to change everything.

- Pramod Bhasin

And often, it does. We saw computers, the internet, e-commerce, smartphones, and each transformed how we live and work. Artificial Intelligence (AI) will no doubt join that list.But every revolution comes wrapped in its own hype. The technology is real, yet the timelines are always exaggerated. Right now, the hype around AI is racing years ahead of what it can realistically deliver.

That gap is visible in the extraordinary flow of money chasing AI dreams. Over the past year, ten unprofitable AI startups have seen their combined valuations surge to nearly a trillion dollars, according to Financial Times. US venture capitalists have invested $161 billion in AI this year, almost two-thirds of their total spending. And in the public markets, Nvidia has become the first company in history to breach $5 trillion in market capitalisation, its chips powering the global supercomputing buildup. That tells the story of an industry priced on what investors hope it might earn one day.

This surge is propelled by extraordinary bets. Big Tech is building at a massive scale: Data centres, chip foundries, and cloud infrastructure to handle the next wave of model training and inference. Citi expects Al-related capex at half a trillion dollars by 2026. Yet so far, only a fraction of it has brought in any measurable business impact. A recent MIT

study found that barely 5% of enterprise AT pilots delivered rapid revenue growth; the rest have stalled or are anaemic.