OpenAI CEO Sam Altman believes the artificial intelligence market is currently in a bubble, The Verge reported Friday.

“When bubbles happen, smart people get overexcited about a kernel of truth,” Altman told a small group of reporters last week.

“Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? My opinion is yes. Is AI the most important thing to happen in a very long time? My opinion is also yes,” he was quoted as saying.

Altman appeared to liken the current AI frenzy to the dot-com bubble, when soaring investor enthusiasm for internet companies in the late 1990s gave way to a market crash.

Between March 2000 and October 2002, the Nasdaq shed nearly 80% of its value as many firms failed to turn a profit.

His remarks echo mounting concerns from business leaders and analysts — including Alibaba co-founder Joe Tsai, Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio, and Apollo Global Management’s chief economist Torsten Slok, who warn that AI investment may be overheating.

Last month, Slok argued in a report that today’s AI boom may surpass the scale of the internet bubble, noting that the top 10 companies in the S&P 500 appear even more overvalued than they were in the 1990s.

The CEO of Silicon Valley-based Constellation Research, Ray Wang, told CNBC that Altman’s concerns are not unfounded, though he noted the risks vary from company to company.

“From the perspective of broader investment in AI and semiconductors… I don’t see it as a bubble. The fundamentals across the supply chain remain strong, and the long-term trajectory of the AI trend supports continued investment,” he said.

He cautioned, however, that a growing wave of speculative capital is flowing into companies with shaky fundamentals and little more than perceived potential, a trend that could fuel pockets of overvaluation.

Fears of an AI bubble intensified earlier this year after Chinese start-up DeepSeek unveiled a competitive reasoning model.