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Investment memo · 2026-02-26

AI Hurtles Ahead

Oaktree Capital Management · Howard Marks

AI Valuation discipline Bubble Capital expenditure NVDA MSFT

AI summary and analysis

Marks discusses AI again, but the core is not to predict which company will win, but to use bubbles, infrastructure overinvestment, and price discipline to evaluate the investment risks of AI assets.

Key points

  • He acknowledges that AI is no ordinary topical hype, but a technological advance whose speed, capabilities, and autonomy have the potential to transform the structure of the economy.
  • The real investment question is not whether AI is useful, but whether the market has given the prices of AI-related assets too much certainty in advance.
  • He used the past railway, Internet and communications infrastructure cycles to remind investors that major technologies can change the world, but they can also destroy the capital of high-priced buyers.
  • Marks' attitude towards AI is twofold: the technology has huge potential, but there is still a high degree of uncertainty about asset prices, capital expenditures and who will win.
  • The value of this memo is to separate "technically correct" from "investment correct" and avoid directly equating the long-term space of the theme with the short-term stock returns.

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