IBM’s chief executive says Wall Street’s anxiety over an AI bubble may be missing the broader structural shift underway.
In a CNBC interview, IBM chief executive Arvind Krishna pushes back against AI bubble talks, noting that enterprise adoption patterns show durable demand.
While Krishna rejects bubble talk, he notes that the AI buildout is likely on the path of sucking in more investments than it should.
“I think that they are overblown. It’s not quite a bubble. Could there be overinvestment? Always when there is a new technology, you’re going to get a bit of overinvestment. Many will thrive but some will not. But that’s the nature of capitalism and that’s the nature of of having a high innovation economy. So with the growth, there will be some pain, but in aggregate, I think that is well justified.”
Krishna points to enterprise spending trends as a proof point, highlighting that IBM’s clients are pouring billions into AI-related business over recent quarters.
“So, over the last nine quarters, we have generated a $9.5 billion book of business on AI. As I look at that, that tells me that our clients are leaning in.”
He says AI adoption sometimes looks slower in early phases, not because demand is weak, but because expectations rise faster than implementation capacity. Krishna also suggests that the longer-term impact will exceed current forecasts, saying that adoption curves steepen as tools mature and organizations learn to deploy them at scale.
“On the payoff, is this any question about the role of AI going forward? No. Is it going slower than people would like? Yes. But I’ll assert, for every major technology, the first two to three years seem slower because people are eager to get even more. In five to 10 [years], we are surprised at how much it has impacted us.”
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