By Mauro Orru
Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang said artificial intelligence is already bringing economic benefits across sectors and that the technology needs more investment, brushing aside fears that hefty spending commitments could lead to an AI bubble.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Huang described AI as a five-layer cake consisting of energy, chips, cloud infrastructure, models and application. He said AI's application--how the technology is used in a specific industry--is the most critical layer of that cake as it is where the economic benefits lie.
Sectors like energy or semiconductors--both key to developing and harnessing the technology--are already growing due to AI, but he said more investments are needed to ensure that the benefits of AI spread to more industries across both developed and emerging economies.
Huang's remarks, his first in Davos, come as some investors have started to question whether hefty AI spending commitments from some of the largest technology companies in the world are justified, fearing there is an AI bubble waiting to burst.
"The AI bubble comes about because the investments are large, and the investments are large because we have to build the infrastructure necessary for all of the AI layers," he said. "I think the opportunity is really quite extraordinary and everybody ought to get involved."
Huang has been a fervent supporter of AI, which keeps turbocharging growth at Nvidia. He said renting the company's graphics processing units or GPUs--chips that accelerate the millions of computations required in AI training--was becoming increasingly difficult because of demand from companies seeking to harness AI.
The growing number of AI companies being created and businesses allocating more of their budget to AI are making it more expensive to rent even older generations of GPUs, he noted, underscoring that investment appetite remains strong despite fears of a bubble.
Huang said AI's rollout still required more energy, land power and skilled workers, calling it "the single largest infrastructure buildout in human history."
Write to Mauro Orru at mauro.orru@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 21, 2026 07:23 ET (12:23 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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