The AI Boom Is Real — But Investors Are Missing The Risk

Added: 2026-04-29

[00:00:02]There's two worlds you've got to invest in right now. There's an old world that's crumbling and a new world of technological revolution. What makes this a very nerve-wracking and uncertain time is we're kind of on a bridge between both of those worlds. I think tremendous opportunity, but like any new technology, you have to be very careful.

[00:00:20]You know, a lot of fortunes are made and a lot of fortunes are lost during times of great technological change.

[00:00:31]Hello and welcome to Wealthon. I'm Maggie Lake and joining me today to discuss the rise of AI and how to invest around this technological change is Brent Rentmester. He is founder and managing director of Windrock Wealth Management. Hi Brad, it's great to have you back on.

[00:00:47]>> Good to see you Maggie. Just a reminder to everyone who's listening, if you have any questions about your allocations or exposure to sectors, you can get a free portfolio review from one of the adviserss in our network. Just go to wealthon.comfree.

[00:01:01]So Brett, uh I so timely to be talking about this because I know you've had AI on your radar for a long time. How are you thinking about it? What are you telling clients?

[00:01:11]>> Yeah, I I think it's real. I think um two years ago we might have said hey we're redoing the tech bubble of 2000 and it's f following a similar pattern but I think the deeper you get in to the space the more you realize how transformative this is going to be for not just these businesses but human society in general and I think the best way to understand this Maggie is when you talk to people and I've mentioned this before a year ago they weren't using AI and now they're like wow AI is amazing but they're using it as a co-orker, a glorified search engine.

[00:01:46]What they don't see, but what all the people in the industry are talking about are all the autonomous agents, the like uh cloned human uh workers that can go out and do tasks and replicate things workers are doing and and that power of what that's going to bring is really tremendous. So, I think tremendous opportunity, but like any new technology, you have to be very careful.

[00:02:08]you know, a lot of fortunes are made and a lot of fortunes are lost during times of great technological change.

[00:02:14]>> Yeah. So, I think that's a really important distinction and I'm hearing similar things from people that uh we're really starting to get a sense now of the potential for this. Um, I saw I saw a headline that there was a bank CEO who had his duplicate, basically his digital twin or agent do an entire earnings call uh, and then ended up making a huge investment as a result. So, you're sort of seeing people, I think, start to move into the more strategic areas. When you talk about the disruption that's coming, what are some of the trends, the the sort of forward trends that you're most excited about that you think qualify this as something that is is really going to be an integral part of society and and not just you referenced the 2000s, not just like a a dot that goes away. What What are the real changes that you see that you think are going to drive this investment cycle? Yeah, I think you've got a lot of really exciting technological advancements coming to a head at similar times that are interrelated and there's as we've talked in the past kind of this blurring of lines of industries to some degree.

[00:03:24]So clearly it's AI but again I think AI is a little misunderstood and when you look at the adoption curve of AI which is one way to see how quickly a technology is reaching the public um at about three years in we're at about a 55% adoption. Now compare that to the internet three years in was 30%.

[00:03:43]>> Personal computer was 20%. So this is the quickest technological move we've seen in our lifetimes. Um second, a lot of smart people think this is all going to be come to fruition in the next 3 to 10 years versus say the industrial revolution which brought a lot of advancements but disrupted society. But whether you call that electricity or the steam engine, you know, that's a 20 to 80year process. gave us plenty of time to think about it and adjust and this is going to come quick. So it's exciting for entrepreneurs because it'll be the first time in human history where everybody has access to kind of the democratization of free intelligence.

[00:04:21]you know, in any country, as long as you have a device, you can get um intelligence. And I think what you're going to see and people are talking about it is AI native businesses, you know, it could be even people talk about one entrepreneur with AI creating a unicorn, a billion dollar company.

[00:04:39]People are talking about that already.

[00:04:41]You don't necessarily need the traditional structure. These next kind of threeear cycle is going to be uh very exciting and disruptive at the same time. I think a lot of people are going to be uncomfortable with that idea. Um, but you know, I guess as you say, like it or not, it's it's something that we at least have to consider uh might happen. How do you So, I mean, these are for some of us, this just sounds like sci-fi turning into real life. How do you >> uh think about it from an investment point of view? How do you get how do you get exposure to this? What are you looking at as the best ways to make sure that you're on the sort of front foot when it comes to some of these trends?

[00:05:21]>> Well, I think you have to be tied in to the circles of people talking about things and the venture capital community, which is normally funding things two or three years before the public markets realize that's the next opportunity. So, that's part of it.

[00:05:34]Then, you've got to have a framework to make order of all of this because what we just talked about AI, crypto, robotics, there's a lot of other things.

[00:05:41]There's electric vehicles, but not just electric vehicles, robo taxis, self-driving taxis, cars, trucks. Um, an extension of that in aviation would be um drones. I mean, there's of course maybe delivery drones and defense drones, but also I'll call them drones, a kind of vehicles that will transport you around in the inner city um quickly.

[00:06:04]And they call these EV tolls. I don't like the name electrical vertical takeoff and landing aircrafts.

[00:06:13]So, they're going to pilot those, I believe. I mean, there's a number of companies doing it, but pilot those in the Olympics in 2028 in LA. So, yes, these are far out. And yes, you know, there's going to be a lot of hype and a lot of money lost chasing the wrong things. But all of these things are coming together because we have the intelligence now. We have the robotics and and really the power was when you combine these two things, right? when you put AI enabled devices whether that's cars, robots, satellites, you know the gamut of stuff. So your question was how do you invest? How do you even go about investing in this? And I think for us, I mean, there's no right answer other than we believe in investing in innovation, but you have to have your eyes wide open and realize that just like the dot thing, the Amazons of the world came out of that.

[00:07:02]Some huge winners came out of that, but a lot of people lost a lot of money. So for us, I think it's trying to figure out how do you get access to these things and a lot of them are in the private market. So we like the right kind of earlier stage venture capital when you're investing early before these things are worth trillion dollars. We like that. We also are involved with a vehic some vehicles where you're investing in some of these later stage well-known tech companies that aren't yet public but are likely to be. So you're kind of you know it's a proven idea. You're not investing in the startup but you know it's not public yet. You're still getting in preIPO. And then the third component would be there are some public equities out there that have interesting things related to some of these areas we're talking about.

[00:07:51]>> Do you think that most of the opportunity is going to be in new companies or do we need to look at sort of existing legacy companies that are really leaning into and adapting uh AI onto their business because from what you describe it sounds like this is going to touch everything. Yeah, I think it is and I think the investment strategy is clearly a balance of those two, the brand new along with the existing. But I do think it's my own personal view that the AI native companies are going to have a real edge in the future. meaning it's going to be harder for the legacy company to adopt quick enough and to replace all these people and still keep the culture and compared to an AI native company that can just run quick and doesn't have all the legacy issues. It's kind of like um a Bitcoin that's decentralized and just operating versus somebody trying to create something with a bank that's dodging. You still got some bank employees who replacing with technology.

[00:08:51]It's like the the crypto decentralized thing is just going to win. Um so I think you're going to have a similar dynamic here over time. And when we kind of flip the page 5 10 years from now and we say who are the leading companies today, I think it's going to be a lot of AI native companies that are either early stage now or maybe not even, you know, started yet.

[00:09:12]>> Yeah, that's so interesting. It's a great point. Um you know, they they just have a a a much clearer runway, right?

[00:09:19]because they don't have to deal with some of the legacy. This brings up a really interesting question about valuations. Do valuations matter?

[00:09:26]Because if you're talking about such transformative change, do you just want access at any price? Do you have to be price disciplined? Because this is where the bubble conversation comes in. You can understand why people are asking about it. But in the same token, gosh, if there's, you know, if there's that sort of opportunity in front of you, do is access more important? How are you thinking about the valuation question?

[00:09:50]>> You know, I think it's a balancing act and the reality is valuation always matters. You never want to overpay for a company. The question is are we underestimating the growth and the trajectory of some of these things, right?

[00:10:02]>> Um and like I was describing earlier in these different industries, a lot of people's perception of what uh electric vehicles is is not necessarily, oh, every city has 80% robo taxis automated and you know, it's much more constrained. So I think it's all about the price you pay relative to the true growth potential and let's be honest we don't know right a lot of these things and then we go to the next frontier of space and orbital economy it's nobody really knows what those venues are going to create but I do think access is important but it's also really important to have if a piece of your portfolio is in the access game and you're a little less discriminant on valuation you've got to have other things that offset that in portfolio. So, we're certainly not suggesting people just chase this and I think there's going to be distinct winners and losers and I think the economies of scale of this make it more of a winners take all type uh economic thing. So, um yeah, some of the quote losers might get gobbled up by the winners, but there's going to be a lot of money lost. So, I think you have to have a discriminating investment process. Have discipline, but you're never going to get comfortable investing in some of these things with a traditional price earnings kind of model right now. So, you have to it's kind of what Amazon taught us. Um, nobody thought Amazon could go for 20 years losing money and still building and they kind of proved it's about free cash flow, it's about adoption, it's about a lot of other things. So um yes valuation but with a caveat that traditional valuation measures are very hard to apply at early stage you know beginnings of industries.

[00:11:42]>> Yeah I think that I think that's a really really interesting point and something that I'm going to hang on to and take away from this because you're really talking about valuation relative to potential, right? And so you've got to that's why you have to really stay on top of this and and and try to figure it out. I think that's where the disagreement comes because people disagree what the potential is. Um, you know, the true futurists are very optimistic about what the potential is and then you have more traditional people that feel like we're overpaying or that the price of the stock is too high because they're not so convinced on that future potential. So, that's a really good place for us to continue to challenge ourselves and have a framework I think when we're looking at that. Um, >> maybe if I could just could I just add one thought? It's also recognizing human behavior cycles and I think we're we're still at a point where yeah, everybody knows about AI but they're not all invested in it. Where you want to be cautious is when some of these companies go public to the extent there's a race into them and maybe the bubble maybe there is a bubble formed out of that where there's just too much hype relative to like we just said the long-term realistic growth potential of these businesses. But I think normally you see that when the masses rush in or when these big companies that are still private go public and every index fund across the globe has to buy them as a major position as an extra catalyst. I mean that's when we will probably be looking at the valuation side a lot harder and maybe putting the brakes on on things. And to your point, if everyone is a forced buyer of them because they're in the index, then we have to, you know, we have to look at what what they're actually able to do and what kind of moat they have versus, you know, the the sort of future future potential and the price that everyone's paying if they if it rockets higher, which I I think most of us assume it will. Um, so it's going to get tricky, but it's something that we're going to have to a formula we're going to think have to come back to. Um while we while we're in this I uh transition period, we're talking a lot about the opportunities and the the the possibility of transforming human nature, but I know you're also focused on the risks that come with this and you're very much thinking about this in kind of a forth turning framework. What what are the risks that you see balance that you need to balance against some of these opportunities? Yeah, I' I'd frame it by saying this is kind of where we've we've uh the analogy we've come up with that there's two worlds you've got to invest in right now. There's an old world that's crumbling in a new world of technological revolution that's very exciting. And what makes this a very nerve-wracking and uncertain time is we're kind of on a bridge between both of those worlds. And when you look behind you at the old world, the bridge is crumbling and falling apart and you're you're racing to the new world, but you're not there yet. And so um the old world won't just go away. And the old world is the forth turning kind of worry that about every human lifetime there's a crisis moment and a resetting based on the fact that people lose uh really trust and faith in the system.

[00:14:46]And this was made famous by uh the book the fourth turning. And I'll just show the the most recent one by Neil how was the fourth turning is here. So, anyone that doesn't know the philosophy but wants kind of the update, I think it's a great read and there's a lot of lessons in it.

[00:14:59]>> I keep saying we're gonna do a book club. We should do a book club.

[00:15:02]>> Yeah. And and have a have an AQA on it.

[00:15:04]But yes, um I know a lot of of really smart market folks are very uh attuned to that right now. And I like that you put the new addition out saying it's here just in case there's any misunderstanding. It's here to your point about the bridge.

[00:15:18]>> Yeah. And I think maybe I mean just to go a little deeper um the monetary system is the problem. We we've been living on printed money, borrowed debt endlessly and there is a time to pay the piper for the whole globe. It can't happen endlessly. I mean we're approaching $40 trillion of official debt. But when you look at the unfunded liabilities and you really say, "Well, what's the present value? What would I need today to pay all that off?" Most people come up with over a hundred trillion. It's mindbending. And yet, you know, we're overspending by almost$ two trillion dollars a year. We're paying a trillion dollars on interest. And we only take in five trillion in tax revenue. So, you can't keep just taxing producers and think you're going to put a dent in this. It's just there's something more fundamental that has to happen.

[00:16:03]>> So, what so how can and I think this is really important. We mentioned at the beginning of the show um you know we all need to look at our allocations and we all need to sort of stress test our portfolios to see that check if we're ready for this because you want to be seizing the opportunity but it sounds like you really need to play defense as well as some of these systems start to to come under strain. So how are you positioning for that for that? What does that mean from an investment point of view? Yeah, I I think it means for us increasingly we're more of a barbell approach. Like think of a weightlifter with a bar and weights on each side. You know, traditional diversification would be kind of you have weights all the way through that bar and you're equally distributed and for all these outcomes.

[00:16:47]I think more and more you've got to play towards the future and what the winners might be and you've also got to really hedge against an unwind of the system.

[00:16:55]Now, we don't know what an unwind looks at like, but I will tell you just as a student of financial history that there are clear signs of end of empire kind of behavior. You had this in Rome, the looting of the treasury. You also had this in Rome where they had a silver daenerius coin that by the end of it had no silver left in it. So, we're doing something very similar today. Um, you know, the looting is kind of this whole fraudulent system where nobody really feels good that their tax money is really making the impact that it should, right? The dilution of the silver daenerius is akin to, well, we used to have gold backing everything. Now we just print money. Now we don't even print money. It's just a digit on a screen. Um, and so there's a death spiral kind of worry to things like that. And at the same time, the end of empires, none of the old systems work for people. And that's the lesson of the forth turning. You lose trust and faith because the systems built that worked for generations are now all breaking.

[00:17:53]>> So we've talked about this before, but health care, the value proposition and higher education and even social security. I was just refreshing numbers that >> in 1940 there were over a 100 workers per retiree. We're now down to 2.7. I mean, we could wake up and it's going to be one to one. Maybe you'll have >> robots robots don't pay social security, right? I mean, so >> yeah, that's part of it. But you could I mean we could be in a world where you wear a button of someone of the one retiree you're supporting because it's just your earnings one to one ratio. So we've known for generations that these systems that are built on kind of a demographic pyramid that no longer exists we're going to fail. Nobody there's there's just no political will to solve it. So what will happen is it will hit a brick wall and we'll have to come up with a new system quickly. And hopefully some of the seeds for that are being laid with crypto and some other things. But it's not going to be a smooth sailing path in my opinion.

[00:18:47]>> Yeah, it's not clear that the baton what what the baton handover is not clear to me even though I hear hear people talk about that. I I also worry you didn't mention this but I feel like um we feel the strain because we've seen increased violence. We just had another assassination uh attempt thwarted over the weekend as we discussed this. Uh it's incredible. Um and we're coming into a midterm in midterm election. I think we all worry about people really losing faith in the system.

[00:19:19]>> Yeah, absolutely. And that's right. You see it everywhere when there's a breakdown of a system, there's violence, people are unhappy, they can't get the care they need from all these systems.

[00:19:30]And I think we're there. And you know, I even look at I'm in the suburbs of Chicago. Just listened to a podcast recently. I was shocked to hear that the city of Chicago, Cook County, 80% of all re real estate I'm sorry. Yeah. 80% of all real estate taxes collected go to pensions, like legacy pension costs.

[00:19:49]>> It's, you know, how can you provide service? How can you move forward when all your money is just getting sucked into the old promises? And that's kind of a microcosm of the overall economy, right? All your tax money. Well, we can't even keep up with the debt now. We can't even pay interest on the debt.

[00:20:04]When economies start getting in those predicaments, um, the math just works against you. So, I don't want to suggest in this interview that you should just be looking at all tech and everything's great. It's far from that. We're in a real uh generational change moment and we have to acknowledge these two worlds with equal significance and I don't know where we are in the race over the bridge to the new world. I'm I'm hopeful in the longer run that these technologies help become part of the solution, but it's unclear how long the fuse is before things start blowing up, so to speak. in the old paradigm.

[00:20:40]>> Yeah, it feels like that bridge is is feeling a lot like the uh rickety Indiana Jones. So wooden bridges that he's always trying to struggle to get over. So you talked about hedging, but specifically what do you look to do in this barbell strategy as you lean into tech on the defense side? What kind of hedging? What kind of assets do you think will protect against that decline of the old world?

[00:21:03]>> Yeah. Well, let let me before I exactly answer, let me just say where I think the risk is for most US investors. Most US investors are heavy in US stocks and US bonds. And historically, the theory was stock market breaks down, rates come down, and bonds get support. But I think that's going to be called into question much like it was in the 1970s. If you get into a period of inflation or higher rates, even if it's driven by just loss of faith in the paper currency itself, both stocks and bonds can suffer. So equities, defensive equities do play a role, but I think there's more fundamental things such as precious metals that are kind of a timehonored store of value outside of the system without, you know, a promise to pay from anybody, which is what bonds are. Some bonds play a role, but you know, for us, it's short-term, generally short-term treasuries because you want to be able to have enough liquidity to pivot if things change and you so you got to have liquidity at the right level. So you can change with what's going on with these forces and I think generally hard assets. I mean the the race towards robotics and AI enabled devices all comes back to strategic metals whether you're talking about you know silver or copper or go down the gamut of resources to make all these things happen. I think there's a global war that is more clear now in 2026 and maybe several years ago for resources. So hard assets, things that are going to be in demand even in an AI tech- enabled world, I think are a place people need to at least educate themselves on and see what the fit might be in a portfolio.

[00:22:39]>> Yeah, absolutely. And and as you point out, um most people are still massively underweight those type of assets and and heavily heavily overweight not only equities but US equities. That's right.

[00:22:52]In particular, so there's a high degree of concentration. Just want to ask you about gold really quickly because you mentioned precious metals but yet when we saw that and I think people think these are on opposite sides right the semiconductor AI trades back on and gold's down and so that they move in opposite directions obviously from what you laid out in barbell you do not see it that way at all that kind of pullback in gold a buying opportunity as far as far as you're concerned does that in any way dissuade you from from an allocation in your portfolio >> you know we took a little bit of profits earlier this year when things ran ran way up. So I do think in every asset class it's about taking reasonable profits and so for us gold and silver is really a core tenant in long-term portfolios until such time that governments are living within their means and you know we're paying our debt back and but nothing's changed with that. So as long as that's the case I think it's likely that gold and silver are going to be good staples and portfolios. So the pullback difficult to say um a little unusual but it had such a big runup.

[00:23:54]>> Um I I don't know about the correlation with tech. I would say if you look back at the last three years semiconductors are up big and gold and silver up big.

[00:24:01]So depending on what time period you look at you might come up with different conclusions. I think our barbell would suggest both tech can be a winner. At the same time things like gold and silver and again not investment advice.

[00:24:13]This is just broad categories of investment areas to to um contemplate, but yeah, I think they can coexist and both prosper.

[00:24:22]>> Yeah. And and they may have to, in fact, um but this is just the beginning of the conversation that I think we're going to be having as we start to see AI really become ingrained um in society and these changes take place. Um fantastic stuff, Brett. Thank you so much. Again, this is why we're we're letting everyone know we got we all have to educate ourselves on this. So, if you would like to have a conversation and look at your portfolio, look at your asset allocation across things like technology, commodity, as well as stocks and bonds, I'm happy to help in that regard. We you can go to wealthy.comfree and get a free portfolio review from a member of the Windrock team or someone in our network. So, uh please take us up on that and we will see you all again soon. Thanks so much, Brett. Enjoy the conversation.