Artificial Intelligence: The Last Pillar Supporting Today’s Market Valuations

Bruno Bertez

May 18, 2026

In a market where company valuations have reached historic highs, massive investment in artificial intelligence is no longer merely a technological opportunity.

It has become an essential condition for the very survival of financial capital itself.

Artificial intelligence represents the direct counterpart to the urgent need for profits arising from the significant overvaluation of listed companies.

Current valuations, which far exceed historical norms, require a compelling long-term « story. » Leading technology firms are now trading at price levels detached from their present profitability.

These elevated valuations already factor in enormous levels of investment and assume that future gains will more than offset today’s heavy costs.

Yet in a mature economy where natural growth is slowing, such a gap can only be justified by a profound shift: a fundamental change in how value is created and distributed.This shift means a lasting reduction in the role of human labor in production.

By automating not only routine tasks but also complex cognitive work, artificial intelligence promises to achieve what capital has never fully accomplished before: replacing large amounts of human labor with technological capital that can scale at almost zero additional cost.

This is the late, global realization of a trend identified by Marx in the 19th century—the gradual decline in the value of living labor in favor of constant (technological) capital.

Artificial intelligence is the tool that finally makes this trend exponential and applicable across the board.

Without this narrative of artificial intelligence, stock prices would collapse. Markets are no longer primarily valuing current earnings or dividends, but rather bets on a future dominated by a few powerful players.

If artificial intelligence fails to deliver on its promises of major productivity gains, value capture, and profitability, the current bubble will not deflate gradually but burst abruptly—because the justifying story will have vanished. At this level, stories tend to be all or nothing.

Artificial intelligence has therefore ceased to be a simple disruptive technology. It has become systemic. The stability of today’s entire financial structure now rests on its shoulders.

This is why these investments are no longer optional.

They are existential—win or lose, succeed or fail.

They have become mandatory.

Companies that refuse to invest at massive scale (in data centers, foundational models, dedicated energy, talent, and infrastructure) simply exit the competition. The game has turned Darwinian: only a handful of survivors will capture the enormous rewards generated by a dominant artificial intelligence.

The Winner-Takes-Most Logic!

Recent history illustrates this clearly. Google (Alphabet) built an exceptionally powerful and durable source of returns through its dominance in search and online advertising. This advantage stems from a near-monopoly on information and the ability to monetize global attention.

Artificial intelligence now offers the chance to replicate and amplify this model across new fields: software development, law, medicine, creative work, logistics, and finance.

Whoever masters the dominant layer of general or specialized intelligence will be able to impose their advantage across entire markets.This is precisely the logic that Berkshire Hathaway appears to have understood. Warren Buffett, long cautious about technology valuations, has made Alphabet one of the few holdings he continues to increase significantly.The bet is crystal clear: in a technological race with astronomical fixed costs, there will not be ten winners—there will be one or two. If a single player succeeds in building a lasting and defensible advantage, it will most likely be Alphabet, thanks to its lead in data, distribution, talent, and financial resources.

Berkshire is not betting on artificial intelligence in the broad sense; it is betting on the most probable survivor.

A Risky but Coherent Bet! This wager remains speculative, of course. Artificial intelligence may encounter physical limits (energy, data, talent), regulatory or political resistance, or technical disappointments—the current models are statistically impressive but still far from true general intelligence.

Even so, an artificial intelligence that is merely highly capable would be enough to shift sufficient value from human labor to capital to support a significant portion of today’s elevated valuations.

The stakes go far beyond the technology sector. This is a macroeconomic and civilizational question: how can a financialized economy, in which capital demands ever-higher returns, continue to function without a profound productive revolution that dramatically reduces the burden of human labor?

Today, artificial intelligence is the only credible candidate for that role.

Massive investment in artificial intelligence is therefore not just rational for companies; it has become a systemic necessity to preserve the coherence of current capital valuations.

Those who understand that this race will produce only a small number of winners—and who bet on the best-positioned players to build the great advantages of the 21st century—will be the survivors of the next major reallocation of wealth. Everyone else risks discovering, suddenly, that today’s extraordinarily high valuations were sustainable only through the hope of a future that only artificial intelligence may, perhaps, deliver.