Investors Shouldn’t Assume AI Will Wipe Out Entire Businesses
Investors Shouldn’t Assume AI Will Wipe Out Entire Businesses
Publish Date: 2026-03-30 10:43:00
Source Domain: www.forbes.com
When a new technology captures the market’s imagination, investors tend to respond in two ways. They rush to identify the winners and just as quickly write off the losers.
We are seeing that pattern again with artificial intelligence.
A screen displays an artificial intelligence (AI) processor during Keynote 1 at the MWC (Mobile World Congress), the world’s biggest mobile fair, in Barcelona (Photo by LLUIS GENE / AFP) (Photo by LLUIS GENE/AFP via Getty Images)
AFP via Getty Images
AI will continue to change the economy in important ways. That much is obvious. It will help companies operate more efficiently, speed up a wide range of tasks and expand output without a matching increase in headcount.
What matters more for investors, though, is that those gains will not be distributed evenly. In some parts of the market, AI will strengthen incumbents. In others, it will pressure business models built around speed, convenience or routine execution.
Investors, however, should be careful not to confuse pressure with extinction. Technology can compress margins and force companies to adapt without making them obsolete. Even when an industry changes dramatically, that does not mean it disappears. History offers plenty of examples.
For years, many assumed Amazon would wipe out traditional retail. That happened in some categories, though far from all of them.
Off-price retailers such as T.J. Maxx, Ross Stores and Burlington Stores have held up remarkably well. In fact, over the past year TJ Maxx and Burlington have gained more than 30% while T.J. Maxx has jumped about 65%.
That performance reflects something straightforward yet easy to overlook. Many shoppers still want to go to a store, hunt for deals and leave with their purchases in hand. E-commerce changed retail in lasting ways, but it did not eliminate every physical business that once looked vulnerable.
We saw something similar in fixed income. For years, many believed automation would hollow out sales and trading desks at…
