The largest AI wealth-creation wave in history: Some celebrities have made 10-fold profits, and some individuals have earned one million a year.
AI is creating wealth at an unprecedented speed and scale, and even celebrity artists are benefiting from it.
For example, the well - known singer G.E.M. Recently, to promote her new book, the long - form science fiction novel "The Road of Revelation", G.E.M. appeared on the podcast of the talk - show actor Li Dan. During the program, G.E.M. conveyed an unexpected message to the outside world: besides being a singer, she is also an AI investor.
According to G.E.M.'s explanation, this cross - border investment was actually a coincidence. "A brother with the same religious background as me introduced another brother with the same religious background to me. This person happened to like my music very much. He was involved in AI - related fields. I learned what their company was doing. So, I got this investment opportunity."
For this investment, G.E.M. did a lot of reading and research to further understand the business of the invested company and the logic behind AI, and completed the investment in the relevant company in 2019. At the end of 2022, ChatGPT emerged out of nowhere. Its amazing text understanding and generation ability shocked the world, and then drove the rapid development of the entire AI industry. As an AI investor, G.E.M. also benefited from it. According to her disclosure, she has now received a ten - fold return.
G.E.M.'s story is just a microcosm of the great AI era. Generative AI is generally considered to have the power to change the world, and various capitals are therefore willing to invest real money in it. Against this background, not only do many AI startups show amazing financing capabilities, but the stock prices of various technology giants have also soared one after another.
Take NVIDIA (NVDA.NASDAQ), the "shovel seller" in the AI era, as an example. Its stock price has soared by more than 4,500% in the past six years, making it the world's first company with a market value exceeding $4 trillion. Jensen Huang, the founder of NVIDIA, couldn't help but sigh that the number of millionaires created by AI is expected to exceed the number created by the Internet in 20 years.
The speed of wealth creation in the AI era is more amazing than any other era.
The Crazy AI Wealth - Creation Wave
There is no doubt that the core of this wealth - creation storm is those highly - regarded AI startups. They have often been established for only a few years, but their value has skyrocketed because they have caught the wave.
For example, Scale AI, a data annotation service company founded by two post - 90s Chinese, Alexandr Wang and Lucy Guo. In June this year, they sold 49% of the company's shares to Meta for about $15 billion. After this transaction, the valuation of Scale AI doubled to $29 billion. Lucy Guo, one of the founders, saw her net worth multiply, successfully replacing singer Taylor Swift with a net worth of $1.25 billion to become the world's youngest self - made female billionaire.
There are many similar stories. For instance, Base44, an AI startup founded by 90s programmer Maor Shlomo, was acquired by Israeli Internet giant Wix for $80 million in cash just six months after its establishment.
Even if they are not acquired, many AI startups can still achieve amazing valuations in the venture capital market. For example, Pokee AI, founded by Zhu Zheqing, the former head of Meta's AI application reinforcement learning team, received a $12 million seed - round investment when the company was less than a year old and the team size was less than 10.
According to the statistics of CB Insights, a global market data research platform, there are currently 498 artificial intelligence "unicorn" companies in the world. The total valuation of these private artificial intelligence companies with a valuation of no less than $1 billion has reached $2.7 trillion. Among them, 100 artificial intelligence companies were established after 2023, accounting for more than 20%.
Beyond these startups, AI has also created many super - individuals with its powerful generative ability. In 2023, Xu Wei (a pseudonym), who left a large company, created a popular photo - taking app with the help of AI's powerful programming ability. The app once topped the paid app list on the Apple App Store, attracting a lot of attention.
However, different from the direct monetization methods of AI applications overseas, Xu Wei told a reporter from Time Weekly that this app didn't bring him much actual profit. What really made him money was the consulting business. After the app became well - known in the industry, many large companies extended an olive branch to him, hoping that Xu Wei could share his experience in using AI to help their teams build better AI office processes. From these jobs, Xu Wei earned nearly one million in a year.
Behind this, the market generally believes that in the AI era, the large - company paradigm of "acquire new users - iterate - monetize - acquire new users" in the Internet industry for many years has been shaken, and startup teams are beginning to have more development opportunities: as long as they create good enough products, they can seize enough opportunities to make a product grow rapidly.
Wu Taibing, the founder and chairman of Wondershare Technology (300624.SZ), an A - share listed company of AIGC software, once analyzed and told a reporter from Time Weekly that the development of AI technology is transitioning from "resource - intensive" to "efficiency - driven". This change has broken the competitive barriers built by traditional large companies through "computing power monopoly + data barriers + human - sea tactics", thus enabling other enterprises to have the possibility of "winning with ingenuity" in the era of technological equality.
Wang Jian, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, also pointed out at the BEYOND Expo 2025 that people used to think that the AI revolution could only be driven by large companies, but in reality, small teams that are not favored may break through. "It is precisely young people and small enterprises that have great opportunities in the field of AI."
Bubbles and Opportunities
On the other side of the coin, as the AI wealth - creation myths worth hundreds of millions are intensifying, the industry's concerns about AI bubbles are also increasing.
For example, Guo Tao, an angel investor and senior artificial intelligence expert, believes that the explosive wealth creation in AI in recent years is more the result of the coupling of technological breakthroughs and capital enthusiasm.
Guo Tao analyzed and told a reporter from Time Weekly, "On the technological level, the innovation of the Transformer architecture has completely changed the AI computing paradigm. Multimodal pre - trained models have significantly lowered the threshold for AI development, enabling the technology to move from the laboratory to large - scale applications; on the hardware level, the performance leap of dedicated AI chips has rapidly reduced the training cost, and the marginal benefit of technology implementation has significantly increased; at the same time, on the capital level, more than tens of billions of dollars in global venture capital pour into the AI field every year, giving rise to a unicorn ecosystem with inverted valuations. Some enterprises have received billions of dollars in financing before achieving profitability. This qualitative change in technological feasibility and the amplifying effect of capital leverage have jointly created the speed of wealth creation in the short term, and even formed a unique window period far exceeding that of traditional industries."
Behind the madness of the capital market, limited by the capabilities of underlying models and high computing power costs, the AI industry has not yet found real large - scale application scenarios. Many technology company bosses have therefore made frequent statements, saying that the current market sentiment is overly optimistic and there is a risk of a bubble in AI investment.
For example, Cai Chongxin, the chairman of Alibaba (BABA.NYSE; 09988.HK), once said that there are signs of a bubble in the construction of artificial intelligence data centers. Many data center investment announcements overseas are "duplicated" or "overlapping", which may lead to resource waste and excessive competition. The CEO of well - known technology company Fiverr even emphasized in an open letter that 99% of AI startup projects will be eliminated within one or two years.
In Guo Tao's view, the bubble in the AI industry stems from the mismatch between expectations and reality. The sky - high valuations of unprofitable AI companies have significantly deviated from the range supported by fundamentals, which reflects the market's excessive optimism about the speed of technology commercialization. When capital liquidity tightens, business models lacking stable cash flows will face severe tests. Especially in the fierce competition for pricing power of general - purpose AI products, the industry reshuffle may be accelerated.
A similar situation has already occurred in China. After DeepSeek emerged out of nowhere in February this year, the six well - known large - model startups that were originally highly regarded began to lose popularity significantly. They had to adjust their directions and focus more to survive better. For example, Baichuan Intelligence, founded by Wang Xiaochuan, the founder of Sogou, recently announced a strategic downsizing. The number of employees was reduced from the peak of 450 to less than 200, and the management level was also reduced from 3.6 to 2.4.
Bubbles and reshuffles may not be a bad thing. Wang Xiaochuan recently said in a media interview that the panicked influx of capital and the infinite imagination of the future are an inevitable prelude to technological change.
"This is a bit like the law of the Gartner technology maturity curve. When expectations soar to the peak, the gap between reality and application will inevitably lead to an adjustment period. When people find that technological breakthroughs have not been immediately translated into an explosion of applications, the enthusiasm will cool down, and the industry will calm down to rethink." Wang Xiaochuan said.
The market will eventually return to rationality and discover new opportunities during the adjustment. In 2000, although the bursting of the US Internet bubble destroyed countless companies, it also gave birth to technology giants such as Amazon and Google. Now, the crazy wealth - creation wave sweeping the AI field is also very likely to give birth to giants that will define the next era after the reshuffle.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Time Weekly" (ID: timeweekly), author: Xie Silin, editor: Wang Ying. Republished by 36Kr with authorization.