This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
Bessemer Venture Partners partner and top investor Byron Deeter doesn’t buy the argument that today’s AI surge is just another dot-com bubble. His reason: the money this time is backed by real revenue.
The numbers are pretty big, and yet the revenue side is the difference this time, Deeter told CNBC. He pointed to OpenAI and Anthropic as examples, saying they’re already generating billions in sales at a pace the software industry has never seen before. OpenAI is taking aim at Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) search dominance with ChatGPT, while Anthropic is leaning on its API model to drive business value.
Deeter, an investor in Anthropic, Perplexity and Canva, said the trillions pouring into AI infrastructure are justified. In his view, the market is so large that it could add a zero to traditional software benchmarks.
He acknowledged the disruption feels intense but argued it’s no different in spirit from past industrial revolutions. AI, he said, will lead to more jobshigher-value, more interesting oneseven if the realignment comes faster than past shifts. Power shortages remain a challenge, but Deeter predicted big leaps ahead in energy and efficiency.
