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Editor’s Note: In 2012, Mark Zuckerberg paid $1 billion for a 13-person photo app that had no revenue and, by most accounts, no real business model. Wall Street called it the worst deal of the year.
A decade later, Instagram alone generates tens of billions in revenue – and the people who profited most never bought a share of Meta stock. They owned a piece of Instagram long before Zuckerberg came knocking.
My colleague Luke Lango, InvestorPlace’s tech and growth specialist, thinks that same pattern is repeating itself across the AI boom – just at a much larger scale.
So, for today’s Smart Money, I invited Luke to track where Silicon Valley’s biggest AI labs are pouring their money, and he makes the case that the next fortunes won’t go to the companies building AI, but to the smaller players the giants can’t afford to compete with. Luke will walk through the full framework — plus one specific company he thinks fits the pattern — during a free online event this Thursday, July 30, at 1 p.m. Eastern. Reserve your seat here.
