Billionaire Mark Cuban has sounded the alarm on the escalating artificial intelligence (AI) arms race, predicting a fierce battle among tech giants pouring over a trillion dollars into the industry.
What Happened: In a series of posts on X, Cuban warned that this massive AI investment will reshape intellectual property (IP) dynamics, declaring, “IP is KING in an AI world,” as companies scramble for dominance.
Cuban's first post on Monday highlighted the staggering financial stakes: “What people are missing about AI, IMO, is no company is going to spend what will end up being more than a trillion dollars and accept not being dominant. They will find a way to battle. I don't know how, other than to guess it will get ugly.”
This underscores his belief that the scale of investment, driven by firms like Alphabet Inc.‘s GOOG GOOGL Google, Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, and Microsoft Corp. MSFT will fuel aggressive competition.
In another post, he elaborated on the strategies at play, as many firms are hiring talent and acquiring IPs to advance their models. He explained that these firms will start paying to lock up IP and the people who create the models to keep it away from their competitors.
Cuban advised creators to adapt, stating, “If you create valuable IP, Encrypt and silo it. Let companies bid on it. Or just use it for your own behind a paywall model.”
He also expressed disappointment about the end of the “publish or perish” era, explaining that now, when you publish, the value of your work fades because it's quickly used up by all the basic AI models. “It's now publish, and its value perishes, because it got eaten up by every foundational model,” Cuban said.
Why It Matters: As the AI landscape evolves, Cuban's insights signal a transformative shift, urging stakeholders to safeguard their IP in this trillion-dollar showdown.
Here are some stocks to watch that have been spending on AI.
| Stocks | YTD Performance | One-Year Performance |
| Nvidia Corporation NVDA | 24.65% | 39.56% |
| Apple Inc. AAPL | -13.40% | -5.71% |
| Microsoft Corp. MSFT | 21.85% | 15.15% |
| Amazon.com Inc. AMZN | 2.68% | 23.87% |
| Alphabet Inc. GOOG | -2.46% | 1.41% |
| Meta Platforms Inc. META | 17.53% | 44.50% |
| Tesla Inc. TSLA | -13.09% | 31.07% |
Meanwhile, here are some AI-linked exchange-traded funds which invest in both big and small companies scaling their businesses with AI.
| ETF Name | YTD Performance | One Year Performance |
| iShares US Technology ETF IYW | 12.02% | 18.34% |
| Fidelity MSCI Information Technology Index ETF FTEC | 10.26% | 17.48% |
| First Trust Dow Jones Internet Index Fund FDN | 10.20% | 33.78% |
| iShares Expanded Tech Sector ETF IGM | 11.89% | 21.34% |
| iShares Global Tech ETF IXN | 12.61% | 14.93% |
| Defiance Quantum ETF QTUM | 15.25% | 48.92% |
| Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF MAGS | 5.59% | 22.36% |
The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY and Invesco QQQ Trust ETF QQQ, which track the S&P 500 index and Nasdaq 100 index, respectively, were higher in premarket on Monday. The SPY was down 0.24% at $629.10, while the QQQ advanced 0.25% to $562.68, according to Benzinga Pro data.
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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
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