Gary Higgins / Boston Business Journal
Marc Cadieux, president of Silicon Valley Bank’s commercial banking, acknowledges that the recent surge in AI funding and sky-high valuations might be creating a speculative bubble. While AI has been evolving for years, the rise of technologies like OpenAI’s ChatGPT has sparked massive investor enthusiasm and capital inflows, fueling rapid growth in AI startups and frontier tech sectors like robotics and autonomous vehicles. Some early-stage AI companies have raised billions at extremely high valuations before fully developing products, raising concerns among industry leaders about sustainability. Cadieux compares this phase to the dot-com boom’s “version 1.0” — a period of experimentation and heavy investment, where many failures occur but valuable lessons are learned. This process may eventually lead to a more stable and transformative “version 2.0” of AI innovation.