Wall Street is entering one of the most consequential tests of investor appetite in modern market history, with Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon arguing that capital markets remain strong enough to absorb a coming flood of fundraising from artificial intelligence giants such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX.
Speaking to CNBC on Tuesday, Solomon delivered a blunt assessment of investor sentiment: fear has largely given way to optimism, and in many cases, outright exuberance.
“There’s plenty of liquidity in the system if the world continues to remain as optimistic,” Solomon said. “We are definitely in a moment where there’s more greed than there is fear.”
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Global financial markets stand on the verge of a fundraising cycle unlike anything seen during previous technology booms. OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX are all expected to seek public listings at valuations measured not in billions but in trillions of dollars. At the same time, technology companies across the AI ecosystem are raising enormous sums to finance data centers, semiconductor production, cloud infrastructure, and power-hungry computing clusters.
The result is a capital demand surge that is reshaping Wall Street.
Unlike previous technology cycles, where investors primarily financed software businesses with relatively light capital requirements, the AI era is increasingly defined by infrastructure spending. Building and operating frontier AI models requires vast investments in advanced chips, networking equipment, energy generation, cooling systems, and hyperscale data centers.
That shift is creating a new investment landscape where companies are seeking funding on a scale more commonly associated with sovereign infrastructure projects than technology startups.
Solomon suggested that investors remain willing to finance those ambitions.
“The stock is trading very well,” he said, referring to Alphabet’s recent multibillion-dollar equity raise. “This is the first actual concrete data point for bringing something of this scale, and it’s encouraging.”
Across Wall Street, there is a growing consensus that the AI investment cycle remains in its early stages despite the enormous gains already recorded in technology stocks.
The optimism is being reinforced by strong equity markets. Major U.S. stock indexes continue to trade near record highs, while AI-linked companies have accounted for a disproportionate share of market gains. Investors have rewarded firms seen as beneficiaries of the AI boom, from semiconductor manufacturers and cloud providers to software companies building AI-enabled applications.
For investment banks, the environment represents a potentially historic opportunity. Goldman Sachs, along with other major underwriters, stands to benefit from a wave of initial public offerings, follow-on offerings, and debt issuances that could collectively reach hundreds of billions of dollars over the coming years. The firm is already involved in several large AI-related transactions, including infrastructure financing deals tied to the industry’s expansion.
Solomon argued that companies would be wise to capitalize on the favorable conditions while they last.
“When capital’s available, if you’re capital consumptive and it’s available, take the capital,” he said.
Although valuations have soared, most leading AI developers continue to consume enormous amounts of capital. Training sophisticated models requires access to tens of thousands of advanced chips and ever-growing computing resources.
Industry leaders have acknowledged that future generations of AI systems may require investments measured in hundreds of billions of dollars. That has created a race among companies to secure financing before market conditions become less favorable.
Yet Solomon’s confidence is not universally shared.
Some investors have begun drawing parallels between the current enthusiasm surrounding artificial intelligence and previous periods of market excess, including the dot-com boom. Some believe that valuations assigned to some AI companies have moved far ahead of current revenues and profitability.
Recent skepticism from investors such as Michael Burry has highlighted concerns that the market may be overestimating the long-term economic returns from AI infrastructure spending. Questions also persist about whether the extraordinary levels of capital expenditure currently underway can generate sufficient returns to justify today’s valuations.
Still, Solomon suggested that record levels of global wealth provide a substantial cushion.
The amount of capital available for investment worldwide has expanded dramatically over the past decade, supported by growth in pension assets, sovereign wealth funds, private equity, private credit, and retail investment flows. In that environment, the market’s capacity to absorb large offerings may be greater than many observers assume.
He also pointed to what could become a self-reinforcing economic cycle. Successful AI companies generate wealth for founders, employees, and investors, who then recycle portions of those gains into taxes, new businesses, and additional investments. That process could create fresh pools of capital that support further innovation and fundraising.
Nevertheless, Solomon acknowledged the inherent fragility of market sentiment.
“Greed can turn into fear very quickly, but that doesn’t mean it will,” he said.
The statement captures the central debate confronting investors today. Markets are betting that artificial intelligence will transform the global economy and generate returns large enough to justify unprecedented levels of spending and valuation.
For now, the momentum remains firmly on the side of optimism. Equity markets continue to reward AI-linked companies, investors are supplying capital at extraordinary levels, and bankers are preparing for a pipeline of deals that could redefine the scale of technology finance.