A simple reason why the market's biggest investors say they aren't worried about AI bubble, tech stock selling (www.cnbc.com)

At CNBC’s Delivering Alpha conference, Philippe Laffont (Coatue) and Bill Ford (General Atlantic) pushed back on fears of an AI bubble and concentration risk in the “Magnificent Seven,” arguing the current cycle is fundamentally different from the dot‑com era. They say the largest public tech firms — Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle — possess a “hyper‑scaler advantage”: enormous balance sheets, low leverage, governance that enforces return‑on‑capital, and the ability to deploy what Wall Street pegs at perhaps $500B+ of AI investment next year. Berkshire Hathaway’s newly disclosed stake in Alphabet and Alphabet’s strong performance were cited as evidence that winners still exist in public markets even as valuations run hot. Technically, their optimism rests on real earnings and cash‑flow follow‑through (Laffont sees top tech firms trending toward roughly $1T of free cash flow annually), and on the idea that falling compute costs won’t kill the market but will expand the set of economically viable applications. Both firms are aggressively funding AI across private portfolios — with early payoffs in customer care, coding and digital marketing — while monitoring public leaders because their infrastructure, models and APIs shape private‑market outcomes. They acknowledged legit valuation and debt concerns (e.g., Oracle) and vocal skeptics, but conclude the structural economics and earnings momentum make them bullish rather than worried.