Mark Cuban says the race to build the world’s most powerful AI model looks eerily similar to the 1990s search-engine boom — and could end the same way: with one dominant player and everyone else left behind.
“You’ve got five, six, whatever it is, companies that are trying to create the ultimate foundational model that we all depend on,” Cuban said on the “Pioneers of AI” podcast.
“It’s almost like in the ’90s when all the search engines were competing pre-Google… There were all these different [ones] and you didn’t know if it was going to be a winner-take-all, or a top five.”
“Now, we know with search engines it’s Google, and then there’s Bing, as, like, 1 or 2% and DuckDuckGo has got a half a percent. So it’s effectively a winner-take-all,” he added. “And that’s going to be really scary because there will come a time where they have to live up to the economics.”
Inside the AI arms race
Cuban said the major AI players — including Google, Meta, and OpenAI — are “spending everything, consuming every resource that they can just in case it’s winner take all.”
But he warned that this race to build the most powerful model could create its own kind of bubble — a view shared to varying extents by many tech and business leaders, including Sam Altman, Bill Gates, and Ray Dalio.
“They may be overspending,” he said. “And if they overspend or get too caught up, the bubble is in the competition between all those models because that could pop just like that with any new technology.”
The billionaire investor said he’s also concerned about the infrastructure behind AI — particularly the vast and expensive data centers now being built to power large models.
“I just can’t imagine over a 10-year period that we aren’t going to improve the technology enough that if you overspend on today’s technology,” he said. “It just doesn’t feel right to me.”
Cuban believes the real disruption won’t come from incremental improvements but from something “incredible” that no one sees coming.
“Somebody’s going to come up with some incredible shit, right? If I knew what it was, I’d do it,” he said.
He’s seen this movie before
Cuban has lived through this kind of moment before. The former Shark Tank star made his fortune during the dot-com boom and said he recognizes the same combination of excitement, hype, and overspending now playing out in AI.
“They anticipate for at least another decade spending every penny they have,” he said of the major model developers.
“I mean, if that’s not ripe for disruption to come up with better ways, I don’t know what is.”
For Cuban, the outcome of the AI wars will depend not just on who builds the biggest model, but on who builds the smartest one.
And, he warned, history suggests most players won’t survive long enough to find out.
