Powell says that, unlike the dot-com boom, AI spending isn't a bubble: 'I won't go into particular names, but they actually have earnings'

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell doesn’t think the AI boom is another dot-com bubble . In fact, he made that distinction explicit on Wednesday, arguing that the current wave of artificial-intelligence investment is grounded in profit-making firms and real economic activity rather than speculative exuberance.

“I won’t go into particular names,” Powell told reporters after the Fed’s policy meeting, “but they actually have earnings.”

“These companies… actually have business models and profits and that kind of thing. So it’s really a different thing” than the dot-com bubble, he added.

The comments mark what seems like Powell’s most direct acknowledgment yet that AI’s corporate build-out—spanning hundreds of billions of dollars in data-center and semiconductor investments —has bec