An era of crazy wealth creation

An unprecedented wealth - creation movement is taking place.

In the past decade, there has never been such a prosperous scene at any time.

It's not the slow and even - paced prosperity described in economic textbooks, but a fierce, uneven, and almost violent - feeling prosperity.

New companies are rushing to go public, old companies are having a second spring, tech giants are saturating the computing power infrastructure at a rate of tens of billions of dollars per quarter, and entrepreneurs are refreshing their personal net worth and achieving class leaps on a monthly basis.

This is not about a few companies or a single industry getting better. The entire tech world is re - entering an expansion cycle, triggering a large - scale wealth migration movement globally and gradually creating a new wealth distribution system.

More importantly, all these things are happening almost simultaneously within a single month.

1. The Trillion - Dollar IPO Wave: Queuing Up to Go Public

If 2023 was the year of AI's awakening and 2024 was the year of the AI arms race, then 2026 is likely to be remembered as the year of AI wealth.

Because suddenly, everyone has realized that the technological dividends are being fully transformed into capital dividends.

Behind this is a revolutionary change in the industry. It's not about the leap - forward breakthrough in the performance of large models, nor is it about the rapid decline of inference costs following a trend similar to Moore's Law. The real core change is that the wealth pattern of the entire tech industry chain has been completely restructured.

In the past two decades, there has never been a moment when three trillion - dollar companies in the US tech industry were simultaneously rushing to go public.

Now, there is.

OpenAI completed a committed investment of $122 billion at the end of March, with a post - investment valuation of $852 billion. Its goal is to go public as early as September. If the final valuation breaks through the trillion - dollar mark as predicted, it will become the largest tech IPO in the history of the US stock market.

Anthropic just raised $65 billion. Less than a week later, it submitted a draft S - 1 prospectus. Its valuation is close to a trillion dollars. Its founder, Dario Amodei, left OpenAI in 2021. In just five years, it has grown from scratch to a trillion - dollar company.

Elon Musk's SpaceX is even faster. It aims to list on the NASDAQ on June 12, raising $75 billion, with a valuation between $1.75 trillion and $2 trillion.

In China, the process is also accelerating, and a new norm of "dual - listing on the Hong Kong and A - share markets" has been created.

MiniMax started the A - share listing guidance process four months after its listing on the Hong Kong stock market. Zhipu officially announced its plan to list on the STAR Market on June 1, aiming to raise 15 billion yuan. These two large - model players are in a race.

In the field of embodied intelligence, Yushu Technology completed the IPO process from acceptance to approval in just 73 days, the fastest in the history of the STAR Market. It is about to become the first A - share listed company in the field of humanoid robots, and there is a queue of companies that have integrated industrial and commercial scenarios waiting to go public.

In the past two years, when people talked about AI, they were discussing the limits of the Scaling Law. The biggest anxiety in the primary market was that companies were getting bigger but harder to exit.

Since this year, the trend has completely shifted to liquidity. People are now talking about who is going public, who is raising funds, who has seen a ten - fold increase, and who has a market value exceeding a trillion dollars.

AI has reopened the exit gate, and the long - dormant capital market has suddenly come back to life.

2. Old Trees Blooming: Old Money Making a Comeback

In the era of mobile Internet, there was a default consensus in the tech industry that new companies would kill old ones.

Google took over Yahoo. Facebook replaced portals. iPhone defeated Nokia. Mobile Internet replaced PC. At the essence of each technological revolution, it's always new players taking the stage and old players leaving.

What's most unexpected in today's movement is not just the sky - rocketing valuations of new companies. Instead, those names that were once forgotten by the market have suddenly regained their vitality.

Intel. At the end of 2024, its market value was only a little over $80 billion. At that time, many analysts were speculating about the possibility of its acquisition. By June 2026, its market value reached $550 billion, with a year - to - date increase of 196% in 2026.

The reason is a simple logical reversal. As AI shifts from training to large - scale heterogeneous inference, inference requires high - performance CPUs, and the value of the computing power hub has been re - priced. For every GPU sold by NVIDIA, Intel has a chance to sell a CPU to manage it.

Oracle was called an old - school database company two years ago. On June 1, 2026, its stock price soared nearly 10% and closed at $248, hitting a new high in nearly a year. The stock's all - time high was $345 in intraday trading in September 2025. Its founder, Larry Ellison, is 82 years old this year. Thanks to the AI wave, his net worth has increased from over $130 billion a year ago to around $270 billion now.

Dell released its financial report on May 28. Its single - quarter revenue reached $43.8 billion, a year - on - year surge of 88%, setting a new record. Its stock price has skyrocketed by 270% in 2026. This company, which was initially based on PCs and traditional servers, has seen its stock price nearly triple in just half a year.

Lenovo's annual revenue in the latest fiscal year was $83.1 billion. Its AI - related business increased by 105% year - on - year, delivering its best - ever annual report. The revenue of its AI PC (edge - side AI hardware) has exceeded half of the total revenue of its traditional PC segment. Its stock on the Hong Kong stock market has soared by 187% in 2026, with its stock price hitting new all - time highs.

On June 1, Jensen Huang announced NVIDIA's first PC chip, RTX Spark, in Taipei. In cooperation with Microsoft and MediaTek, NVIDIA officially entered the personal computer market. He said that the PC is being redefined. Users just need to put forward their requirements, and the rest will be done by the PC.

This is not a distant concept. The first - batch products from Dell, HP, Lenovo, ASUS, and MSI will be launched in the fall.

This is the biggest difference between AI and all previous technological revolutions. It is not a disruptive innovation but an incremental reconstruction.

AI does not first destroy the old world and then build a new one. Today, it is building a new world on top of the old one. From servers to PCs, from the cloud to terminals, AI is rewriting the price tags of every link.

These re - emerging companies don't even need to deliberately invent anything new. They are doing the same thing: positioning themselves in the supply chain that AI needs and waiting to be re - priced.

What's even more noteworthy is that this great prosperity is not only happening in the industry but also re - pricing entire countries.

A typical example is South Korea.

On June 1, Samsung Electronics' intraday market value exceeded 2,000 trillion won for the first time, equivalent to about 9.95 trillion yuan at the closing, setting a record for South Korean companies.

On May 27, SK Hynix's market value exceeded a trillion dollars. Its stock price has increased by 1,044% in the past 12 months. Its operating profit margin in the first quarter was 72%, higher than NVIDIA's 49.1% and TSMC's 58.1%, setting the highest single - quarter profit margin in the history of the global semiconductor industry. Micron also entered the trillion - dollar market value club on May 26. The three storage giants all joined the trillion - dollar club in the same week.

This is also the most noteworthy aspect today. AI is no longer just a competition between companies but has become a wealth competition between countries.

Chips, computing power, electricity, data centers, talent, and the capital market are all being re - priced. AI is re - defining a country's position in the future industrial chain.

3. Unbounded Spending: No One Is Calling a Stop

If the IPO wave represents the revival of the capital market and the resurgence of old companies represents the re - pricing of the industrial chain.

Then the cost - blind capital expenditures of tech giants mean that the whole world is betting on the same future.

Google's capital expenditure guidance for 2026 is between $180 billion and $190 billion. Amazon plans to spend $200 billion, Microsoft $190 billion, and Meta has increased its budget from $125 billion to $145 billion.

The combined capital expenditures of several Silicon Valley giants are approaching $800 billion.

The direction of this money is clear: to buy chips and servers, and to build data centers and power infrastructure. Companies in every link are increasing their stakes.

More importantly, Chinese Internet giants are also stepping up their efforts.

Tencent's capital expenditure in the first quarter doubled, reaching a new high. Alibaba is betting everything on AI cloud, with an investment scale of 380 billion yuan. It aims to achieve over $100 billion in commercial revenue from Alibaba Cloud and AI in the next five years. According to media reports, ByteDance is frantically buying GPU cards, and its capital expenditure budget for AI infrastructure in 2026 has been raised to 200 billion yuan.

What was the narrative of the Chinese Internet in the past few years? Cost reduction, efficiency improvement, share buybacks, dividends, and defensive contraction.

This year, it has suddenly changed.

Everyone has started spending money again. Even if it means sacrificing profits, facing performance pressure, and seeing the stock price fall, they don't hesitate and just bet everything. AI is like a black hole, deeply attracting the giants to jump in.

4. A Once - in - 20 - Year Wealth Migration

I looked back at the tech business history of the past two decades, trying to find a comparable moment.

The Internet bubble in 2000? That was concept - driven, and most companies had no revenue.

The launch of the iPhone in 2007? It changed the consumer electronics industry but not the industrial capital structure.

The large - scale liquidity injection in 2020? It was liquidity - driven, and money flowed into everything.

None of them are exactly the same.

The current environment is most similar to the five - year period from 1995 to 1999 when the Internet was industrialized. At that time, Cisco entered the top - tier global market value echelon, Microsoft completed its platform - based transformation relying on its system ecosystem, and Yahoo, Amazon, and eBay successively listed on the US stock market. The US capital market witnessed a large - scale wealth restructuring.

However, that round of industrial and capital changes took a full five years.

This time, it only took two years.

Moreover, the biggest difference between this time and 1999 is that the industrial profits are real and substantial. NVIDIA's net profit in a single quarter is $58.3 billion. It's not a concept, not GMV, not the number of users, but real cash flow.

This makes the whole situation even more unpredictable.

If it were just pure concept speculation, someone would surely say it's a bubble. But when there are definite profits, growth, and an $800 - billion real - money investment in front of us, it takes a lot of courage to say it's a bubble.

So, everyone has chosen to believe. Or rather, everyone has chosen not to question.

Looking back many years from now, people may not remember what happened in 2026.

They won't remember the day when Anthropic submitted its prospectus, the day when NVIDIA's market value exceeded $5 trillion, or which one of Zhipu and MiniMax rushed to the A - share market first.

But they will remember one thing. Starting from this year, the entire tech world has regained its faith in the future.

Capital has regained its belief in growth, entrepreneurs have regained their belief in changing the world, giants have started spending money again, young people have started starting businesses again, and everyone is making new bets.

In the past decade, the tech industry has been answering a question: Has growth ended?

Today, this unprecedented wealth movement tells everyone that it has just burst out in a more ferocious way.

Words Beyond the Page:

In the past decade, the tech industry has been on the defensive. The mobile Internet dividend has ended, cloud computing has matured, the metaverse has cooled down, and Web3 has failed. Chinese Internet companies have been reducing costs and improving efficiency, and US tech stocks have been deflating their bubbles.

Everyone has been contracting, saving, and waiting.

But today, everyone has started to attack again.

What's truly rare is not that a certain company has seen a ten - fold or hundred - fold increase, but that an era has started to reward risk - taking again.

This is a crazy and uncertain world, and everyone is deeply involved and can't extricate themselves.

No one knows when to stop, but at this moment, no one dares to stop, and no one wants to stop.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Beyond the Page", written by Huahua, and is published by 36Kr with authorization.