A venture capital firm with $5 billion in assets under management is outlining how retail investors could benefit the most from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom.
In a new interview with CNBC Television, Lead Edge Capital founding partner Mitchell Green says investing in tech titans is the best way to profit from the battle for AI dominance.
-->“I think the way you play it, especially if you’re a retail investor, you should go buy the hyperscalers. You can see they’re going to dedicate massive amounts of capital to this space, whether it’s Facebook… I think Amazon said they’re going to spend $60 billion in the second half [of 2025]. [They spent] $56 billion in the first half.
I think Google said they’re going to spend $85 billion or something.
We really don’t know how you compete against these giant hyperscalers… We think they’re the winners.”
In addition to Meta, Amazon and Google, other players in the hyperscaler space are Microsoft and Nvidia.
Green says tech giants will come out on top in the AI race against private firms like OpenAI because these companies can pay top engineers with hundreds of millions of dollars in cash. Meanwhile, private AI firms can only offer equity, which Green points out is subject to massive dilution.
“I can take this side of the argument that OpenAI is dominating the hearts and minds of consumers: the DAUs (daily active users) and MAUs (monthly active users) are just through the roof, so they’ll win. That means they can attract the best talent.
Here’s the problem. The likes of Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Amazon are paying engineers like they play in the NBA. OpenAI can offer equity, but these companies can offer hard cash…
The [equity] dilution for some of these private AI companies is absolutely insane.”
