Bill Gates on why AI will become ‘hyper competitive’

Bill Gates has warned that some AI companies with high valuations will lose out in the “hyper competitive” AI industry, as the investors weigh up whether a bubble is about to burst.

“AI is the most important thing going on,” the Microsoft founder and philanthropist told CNBC’s Tania Bryer at Abu Dhabi Finance Week, amid soaring capital expenditures and a slate of circular deals giving the market jitters.

“Does it mean all of these companies with high valuations will be winners? No, it’s going to be hyper competitive,” Gates said Monday.

“AI is only a bubble in the sense that not all of these valuations will end up going up. Some of them will go down,” he said, adding that AI was “a deeply profound technology that will reshape the world. There’s not the slightest doubt about that.”

Many AI companies have valuations far beyond averages. Palantir and Tesla have a P/E ratio — the ratio between the price of the stock and its earnings per share — well over 200, compared with an average of S&P 500 companies of about 25.

Global markets fell in November as fears of a bubble bursting gained traction.

Gates said that “a reasonable percentage of those companies won’t be worth that much.”

Despite AI frothiness in some parts of the sector, Gates said AI would fundamentally change lives for the better. “Is this profound and real and is going to provide all of these benefits, including the health, education and agriculture that we’re working on? Absolutely, nobody should have any doubt about that.”

Earlier this week, the Gates Foundation and other international leaders and philanthropists pledged $1.9 billion to fight polio by providing vaccines to millions of children and strengthening health systems to protect against other preventable diseases.

Gates predicted that next year would be big for global health.

“We can take these wonderful pledges that we’ve just got and make sure we use them very effectively. It’ll be a year where we’re piloting a lot of those AI tools, the virtual doctor, supporting all the African dialects, the farm advisor… most people in Africa are farmers who have very small plots of land, and today very low productivity,” he said.

“We want to dramatically raise their productivity, and we see that’s doable,” he added.