Mark Cuban has issued a stark warning about the current AI arms race, comparing it to the chaotic search engine boom of the 1990s and predicting a similar outcome: a winner-take-all scenario where one dominant player emerges and the rest are left behind. Speaking on the "Pioneers of AI" podcast, Cuban highlighted the growing number of tech giants—including Google, Meta, and OpenAI—racing to develop the ultimate foundational AI model. “You’ve got five, six, or more companies trying to create the ultimate foundational model that we all depend on,” Cuban said. “It’s almost like in the ‘90s when all the search engines were competing before Google. There were dozens of them, and nobody knew if it would be a winner-take-all or just a top-five kind of thing.” He pointed out that today’s search landscape mirrors that prediction: Google dominates with a commanding share, while Bing trails at around 1%, and DuckDuckGo holds just half a percent. “It’s effectively a winner-take-all,” Cuban noted. “And that’s going to be really scary because there will come a time when they have to live up to the economics.” Cuban believes the current AI race is fueled by massive spending and resource consumption, with companies betting heavily on the possibility of a single model becoming the global standard. “They’re spending everything, consuming every resource they can just in case it’s winner take all,” he said. Yet he cautioned that this frenzy could lead to a bubble. “They may be overspending,” he warned. “And if they overspend or get too caught up, the bubble is in the competition between all those models—because that could pop just like that with any new technology.” He also expressed concern about the infrastructure underpinning AI, particularly the enormous data centers being constructed to power large models. “I just can’t imagine over a 10-year period that we aren’t going to improve the technology enough that if you overspend on today’s tech, it just doesn’t feel right to me.” Cuban emphasized that real disruption won’t come from incremental upgrades but from something entirely unforeseen. “Somebody’s going to come up with some incredible shit, right? If I knew what it was, I’d do it,” he said with a laugh. Having lived through the dot-com boom and built his fortune during that era, Cuban sees clear parallels. “They anticipate spending every penny they have for at least another decade,” he said. “If that’s not ripe for disruption to come up with better ways, I don’t know what is.” For Cuban, the ultimate winner won’t necessarily be the one with the biggest model, but the one with the smartest, most efficient, and most scalable solution. And history, he warns, suggests most players won’t survive long enough to see how it all unfolds.