The tech billionaire Hemant Taneja admits that AI is a bubble. In fact, he welcomes it: “Bubbles are good,” Taneja, the CEO of General Catalyst, a venture-capital firm, told me in an email. If AI comes crashing down, it will lead to “some spectacular failures,” he said—companies will go under and people will lose their jobs—but that’s a price worth paying for “enduring companies that change the world forever.”

His view is widespread in Silicon Valley. Some, such as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, reject the notion that their companies are overvalued. But many of the wealthiest and most powerful people in tech are embracing the idea of an AI bubble. Jeff Bezos has argued that AI might be a “good” kind of bubble. Sam Altman has made similar comments, predicting that AI will be a “huge net win for the economy” even if “a phenomenal amount of money” is lost along the way.

Indeed, a phenomenal amount of money is at stake: OpenAI, which is still far from profitable, is currently worth more than Toyota, Coca-Cola, and Disney combined. This year, Big Tech plans to spend some $650 billion on the AI build-out—a sum that far exceeds the GDP of most countries. Investors are banking that AI will spur a productivity boom and deliver unimaginable corporate profits, but that future could be far off. If the spending dries up first, the bubble could pop—perhaps dragging the rest of the economy down with it. Nonetheless, Silicon Valley thinks that the present mania will eventually pay back its returns through scientific discovery and economic growth. “Stop trying to make bubbles go away,” as the entrepreneur James Thomason recently wrote. “The benefits of innovation outweigh the costs of volatility.” In other words: Be grateful for the bubble.