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Artificial intelligence will continue to be a major driver of U.S. economic growth and corporate earnings for years to come, says Tom Marsico, chairman and CIO with Marsico Capital Management.
Investors who expect the AI theme to fade are likely underestimating both the scale and the duration of the current buildout, he said on the Soundbites podcast.
“The capital expenditures [on the AI buildout] are going to remain high,” he said. “The companies that provide equipment to those hyperscalers are going to be in favour and grow for a long period of time,” he said. “I think it’s underestimated how long this timeframe is going to be.”
Marsico said the infrastructure required to process and utilize AI-driven data alone could support investment activity for the better part of a decade, if not longer.
“First, you need it to accelerate the data, and then you need to treat the data to get the benefits of artificial intelligence from there,” he said. “This is going to take a long period of time. Another seven to ten years.”
As for concerns about runaway valuations, Marsico said top earners within the S&P 500 have a higher margin profile now than they’ve had in the past.
“What I think is misunderstood is that the growth rate of the S&P earnings over the last five years has mirrored the growth rate of the stock market,” he said. “I don’t think that the market is expensive here. I think it’s at a reasonable level.”
The capital spending commitments from Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle and Google amount to roughly 2.6% of U.S. GDP. He also sees some of the strongest growth acceleration among companies building large language models and related AI platforms — companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, and Google Gemini.
Anthropic, for example, started the year with a run rate of $9 billion.
“A couple of months ago, they were at $15 billion. And now their run rate is over $30 billion,” he said. “So, just in a short period here, you’ve seen just absolutely vertical growth in revenues.”
Marsico suggested that lower costs and broader adoption of AI tools will ultimately increase demand for the technology, driving wider usage by consumer and businesses alike.
Citing the Jevons Paradox — the idea that demand for a product rises as price falls — he said AI adoption could produce a generational leap in business efficiency and corporate growth.
“I think it’s just a huge productivity savings instrument that we have that’s just going to accelerate the growth in the United States, and, frankly, accelerate the growth globally,” he said.
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This article is part of the Soundbites program, sponsored by Canada Life. The article was written without sponsor input.
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