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Or sign-in if you have an account.A photo taken on May 13, 2026 shows the letters AI for Artificial Intelligence on a laptop screen (R) next to the logo of the SpaceX' Grok Chatbot application on a smartphone screen. (Photo by Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP via Getty Images)I found myself at a party recently where random applause and cheering erupted from across the room. There was a panel going on simultaneously, but I was buried in conversation and couldn’t make out what the speakers had said. I asked someone nearby. Turns out, one of the panelists had just pronounced: “F— Elon Musk, f— the billionaires.” Or something along those lines.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. 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Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorNow, I have my own criticisms of concentrated wealth and power. But this was Web Summit Vancouver, a technology conference held May 11-14, attended largely by startup founders, venture capitalists, and investors whose shared ambition is to build the next billion-dollar unicorn. Yet the crowd cheering wasn’t protesters standing outside. The cheers were coming from the inside.This newsletter from NP Comment tackles the topics you care about. (Subscriber-exclusive edition on Fridays)By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againThis wasn’t a fringe moment, either. The anti-billionaire, anti-establishment mood had reverberated within the entire conference. At another panel featured speaker Chris Smalls, a labour union activist and co-founder of the Amazon Labor Union, said: “There’s no such thing as a good billionaire. It’s just that simple.”Then, consider some of the speakers: socialist streamer Hasan Piker, Drop Site’s Ryan Grim, Cenk Uygur of the The Young Turks, a progressive YouTube channel, former RT and Al Jazeera contributor Aaron Maté, podcaster and evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein, neo-monarchist Curtis Yarvin, independent journalist Michael Tracey, and right wing YouTuber Lauren Southern. They cover the political spectrum: left, right, and contrarian. But all share a particular anti-establishment sentiment. Even the one who seems keen to install a monarchy.Interestingly, since 2024, Qatar has been hosting the conference’s Middle East edition, “Web Summit Qatar,” under a multi-year partnership with the Qatari government and various state-backed economic institutions, announcing an expansion of $3 billion of its Fund of Funds program at this year’s event in Doha. Surprise: The same conference that draws ovations for denouncing concentrated power has its own entanglements with it.It’s this strange paradox: On the one hand, the conference rails against concentrated wealth and the “elites,” and yet it serves as one of the engines aimed at creating it.But the contradiction deepens further.Although many panelists expressed concerns around AI and wondered what companies can do to be more “human,” the vast majority of startups being showcased on the exhibit floor were AI-based. In the era of “vibe coding,” anyone with a reasonable idea and enough persistence can build an app. The barrier to entry has collapsed. Now that’s not an entirely bad thing. It offers a seat at the table to those who wouldn’t normally be even able to get into the room. One founder I spoke with had given up her waitressing job to start four separate AI-powered companies.But walking amongst the numerous booths consisting entirely of AI apps, I could also see a warning sign. The AI boom, more than almost any technology before it, is likely to accelerate exactly the kind of wealth concentration the speakers on that stage spent a week denouncing. The winners aren’t likely to be the scrappy lone entrepreneurs, but rather the giants who scale up quickly and with force.As for the rest? We may be watching a dot-com bubble in real time. Like the internet, AI is real. But, only a few of these companies will survive and dominate. But venture capitalists have thrown vast amounts of money into what they believe to be the next thing and founders are doing the same now that the tools are available to them. It’s the modern gold rush.“Could they all be wrong,” asked a moderator at a panel with cognitive scientist and prominent voice on AI, Gary Marcus, “Could they all be sort of herd mentality jumping off of a multi-trillion dollar cliff?” To which Marcus responded: “Of course they could be … It’s obviously a very large bet,” arguing that the amount going into AI investments might not match up with realistic returns.It may well all be a house of cards, but for now AI seems unstoppable. And the Canadian government wants in.As some panelists were busy denouncing the tech oligarchy, Evan Solomon, Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, took to the stage on the second day of the summit, to announce $66 million supporting 44 Canadian AI projects, part of a larger $300 million fund. He also unveiled a partnership with Telus for three new data centres: two in Vancouver and one in Kamloops, using closed-loop water systems that can recycle heat to warm up thousands of homes and use 90 per cent less water than traditional data centres. The goal is to build sovereign Canadian compute capacity, built sustainably. Telus estimates that these centres could generate a potential $9 billion in economic activity.It is, on its merits, a reasonable policy ambition. But the scale of what we’re discussing is essentially rounding errors compared to the billions the United States and China are deploying in this space.And ultimately, the ones left standing tend to be the very billionaires that room spent a week denouncing. The question is what happens to everyone else.National Post Join the Conversation This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. 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