Goldman Sachs says we are not in an AI bubble and that its young, multi-millionaire clientele is fully invested in AI energy investments and healthcare innovations.
Last month, more than 100 wealthy young founders, heirs and industry leaders came from around the world to the luxury mountain town of Aspen, Colorado. At Goldman Sachs’ annual At the Helm event, the bank’s wealthy clients dropped down and did push-ups for a Navy SEAL, revealed their relationship with wealth guru Sahil Bloom and strategized an inheritance with Mindy Kaling. But one of the hottest initiatives has been to tackle the elephant in the room: artificial intelligence.
AI is on everyone’s minds, from the office worker worried about the automation of their role to the tech CEO trying to keep up with their competitors. It’s a $280 billion industry that has propelled executives like Anthropic’s Dario Amodei to a billion-dollar net worth and is completely upending the way we operate in our professional and personal lives. So, of course, the wealthy clientele attending the Goldman Sachs annual summit were all ears. The attendees, 30- and 40-something members of the bank’s Private Wealth Management (PWM) division, which has an average account size of more than $75 million, gathered to express their anxiety and excitement.
Over the course of the three-day summit, attendees and Goldman executives talked about everything related to AI: from the most lucrative investments to the technology’s impact on the environment to its potential to innovate across industries. But along with discussions about the hottest AI startups and new advancements, Goldman Sachs had to set the record straight on one issue. Although OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg draw comparisons to the dot-com boom, the $238 billion bank has said we’re not in an AI bubble.
“We’ve had a conversation about the markets and whether or not we think we’re in a bubble,” said Brittany Boals Moeller, regional head of Goldman Sachs’ PWM division in San Francisco. Fortune. “We don’t think we’re in a bubble and we’re paying close attention to that.”
“Will there be winners and losers in AI? Absolutely. There will certainly be places where valuations are overblown, and time will tell where those spaces are. So it makes sense for clients to be diligent in how they invest in AI.”
How Goldman Sachs’ Wealthy Clientele Approaches AI
At the Helm conference, attendees had a lot to say about AI. The group, comprised primarily of millennials and younger Gen Xers, grew up in the internet age and recognizes how technology can change the status quo. Boals Moeller says the recent AI breakthrough is no different. Customers are informed about the technology, how to effectively invite chatbots to businesses that are making waves.
“This is a group of early adopters, high-energy people who are tech-savvy, and so the discussion around AI in general has been very positive,” she explains. “I’m sure some people are worried about where this is going. But a lot of people were very excited about the innovation.”
Some areas of AI have particularly piqued their interest: the technology’s implications for healthcare, personal productivity and energy consumption. In medicine, AI is already being used to good effect. The technology can interpret brain scans twice as accurately as professionals examining stroke patients, detect more bone fractures than humans and detect early signs of more than 1,000 diseases. And when it comes to productivity, many see limitless opportunities. People are using AI to automate mundane work tasks, plan getaways, and deal with a pile of emails. In the office, McKinsey found that long-term use of AI in corporate business could generate $4.4 trillion in additional productivity growth.
All of these complex language models need to be powered, and the millionaires of At the Helm were well aware of the energy drain. It is predicted that in just three years, more than half of the electricity going into data centers will be used for AI, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. By 2028, AI alone could gobble up the same amount of electricity needed to power 22% of all American homes. Boals Moeller says participants are concerned about environmental impacts, but also about how they can properly invest in AI-related energy.
“Energy has emerged in the context of AI as an attractive investment opportunity for clients, and also to balance this with social issues related to energy. [as] a limited resource,” Boals Moeller continues, adding that it’s a way to access AI value creation from a “tangential” place. “How can we really think about it responsibly in relation to energy needs?”
AI is also undoubtedly one of the biggest investment opportunities of this century. And because Goldman Sachs’ PWM clients have between $10 million and $1 billion in assets, they have ample liquidity to bet on the right opportunity. Nvidia stock has been called a “millionaire maker” and Adobe’s aggressive adoption of AI tools has made it a standout long-term play for investors. Event attendees want in on the action, too.
“People were delighted to get closer to [the technology]”, says Boals Moeller.
