AI isn’t just changing how most industries operate, but it could also change the scale of financial outcomes from running a business.
Billionaire investor Mark Cuban has made a bold prediction that encapsulates the immense potential of artificial intelligence. In a statement that is both startling and thought-provoking, Cuban suggests that the world’s first trillionaire won’t just be a product of the AI boom, but could emerge from the most unassuming of origins—a lone entrepreneur working from their basement.
Cuban, a seasoned entrepreneur and a prominent figure on the television show “Shark Tank,” has witnessed the birth and explosion of several technological waves. However, he believes that the current advancements in AI are on a completely different scale. He argues that the rapid evolution of this technology is creating unprecedented opportunities. “The industry’s changing so rapidly, the technology is changing so quickly,” Cuban notes. “Somebody will come up with a new way to utilize it in a way we never thought about before. I mean, all this stuff is just changing every single day.”
Drawing parallels to previous technological revolutions, Cuban emphasizes that while past innovations were groundbreaking, they pale in comparison to the potential of AI. “Just like we saw from the early days of PCs, early days of networks, early days of the internet, early days of mobile phones, early days of 5G, there’s always something bigger and better that’s created by an innovative entrepreneur,” he explains. “But AI just dwarfs all that.” This assertion underscores his belief that we are only at the very beginning of understanding what artificial intelligence can truly achieve.
The most striking part of Cuban’s forecast is not just the creation of a trillionaire, but the profile of this future titan of industry. “We haven’t seen the best or the craziest of what it’s going to be able to do,” he says. “And not only do I think it’ll create a trillionaire, but it could be just one dude in the basement. That’s how crazy it could be.” This powerful image challenges the conventional notion that building immense wealth requires massive infrastructure and large teams from the outset.
Mark Cuban isn’t the only tech leader who’s predicted that individuals will have exponentially more leverage with AI. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has said that AI will help in the creation of the world’s first startup unicorn which is being run by only one human — the founder. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that AI will give everyone the power of a 10,000 person company. With access to open-source models, cloud computing, and a wealth of data, a single individual with a novel idea and the right skills can, in theory, create a product or service that scales globally at an astonishing rate. We are already seeing this on a smaller scale, with small teams and even solo founders launching AI startups that attract significant venture capital funding. The democratization of powerful AI tools means that the next world-changing innovation may not come from a corporate research lab, but from an unexpected corner of the world, validating Cuban’s vision of a basement-dwelling trillionaire.