Sundar Pichai’s Caution Against Betting On AI

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Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, just warned that no company would be immune if the AI bubble bursts, including Google itself.

In a BBC interview, he acknowledged that the moment feels extraordinary but said it contains many irrational elements. Alphabet’s stock is up 46% this year, powered almost entirely by investor enthusiasm around AI capabilities and deployment. However, the way the AI industry is moving seems too good to be true as of now and soon there will be cracks starting to appear.

Pichai said the company will weather the storm if things go bad, but the negative impact would shake all tech giants, not just one or two.

What’s interesting about this timing is that it comes the same week OpenAI released GPT-5.1, Google launched Gemini 3, and Baidu’s ERNIE 5.0 started outperforming GPT-5 on benchmarks. The frontier continues to accelerate while someone with high stakes in the industry is cautioning about overheated valuations. That gap between capability growth and investor pricing is significant, and it’s getting harder to ignore.

Pichai also revealed plans to start training models in Britain, positioning the UK as a third major AI superpower alongside the US and China. The competitive pressure to deploy at scale and move to new markets is only intensifying.

The question he is essentially raising is whether the productivity gains AI delivers will actually justify the capital being poured into infrastructure and research, or whether this is the predictable peak before the correction.