“Investors don’t usually give a team of six people a couple billion dollars with no product… and that’s happening today,” Bezos told an audience at Tech Week in Turin.

“This is a kind of industrial bubble,” said Bezos, who has invested in the American generative AI start-up Perplexity.

But that is not the same as a banking bubble such as the 2008 financial crisis, he argued.

“Those bubbles society wants to avoid. The ones that are industrial are not nearly as bad, it could even be good, because when the dust settles and you see who are the winners, society benefits from those inventions… and that’s what’s going to happen here.”

“This is real,” Bezos continued. “The benefits to society from AI are going to be gigantic.”

Multiple technologies are in a kind of “golden age”, he said, echoing language used by US President Donald Trump. “There’s never been a better time to be excited about the future.”

“AI is real. And it is going to change every industry… it is going to affect every company in the world.”