Good morning. David Solomon, chair and CEO of Goldman Sachs, leads one of the world’s most prominent investment banks and sees AI as a key growth driver, though he cautions the path ahead won’t be straightforward.
“We’ve got a big, diverse economy,” he said. “It’s in pretty good shape at the moment. There are things we cannot see that could set it off, but I think the chance of a recession in the near term is low.” Solomon pointed to the buildout of AI infrastructure as a key force supporting growth.
Turning to the country’s rising debt burden, Solomon said it will result in a “reckoning” if the economy does not grow faster. “The path out really isn’t a revenue path out,” he said. “The path out is a growth path.”
When Rubenstein asked whether the massive market capitalizations of major tech firms, some nearing $5 trillion, signal a potential bubble, Solomon offered a historical perspective.
“Whenever you have an acceleration in technology and people get excited about it, you see significant capital formation by new companies trying to capitalize on that opportunity,” he said. “We’ve seen this before through history.” He added, “It won’t be a straight line.” Solomon further discussed today’s AI wave.
The opportunity set with AI is “enormous,” he said. “There will be winners and losers, and it’s hard to pick them now.” A lot of the capital being deployed will not produce adequate returns—and some won’t produce any returns at all, he added.
Reflecting on past investment cycles, Solomon recalled then-Fed Chair Alan Greenspan’s famous warning about “irrational exuberance” in 1996.
Solomon’s remarks reflect a broader theme across Wall Street: optimism about AI’s potential to drive growth, tempered by awareness that not every investor, or company, will come out ahead.
***Upcoming Event: Join us for our next Emerging CFO webinar, Optimizing for a Human-Machine Workforce, presented in partnership with Workday, on Nov. 13 from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. ET.
We’ll explore how leading CFOs are rethinking the future of work in the age of agentic AI—including when to deploy AI agents to accelerate automation, how to balance ROI tradeoffs between human and digital talent, and the upskilling strategies CFOs are applying to optimize their workforces for the future.
