White House’s Hassett Dismisses Concern Over Financing of AI

White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett dismissed concerns about financing of the artificial intelligence build-out, saying there is plenty of capital in the system for such funding.

“It’s actually like a really well-financed ecosystem,” Hassett said of AI in an interview Monday on CNBC. He was responding to a question about last week’s tumble in technology shares, which sent the Nasdaq Composite index to the lowest since July.

Hassett said that it’s true that “some companies that maybe have a lot of debt, and you kind of worry about” that. But “there are really, really big-pocketed companies sort of lurking all over the place, owning the equity, owning the debt, perhaps willing to pounce if somebody has trouble.”

“There’s so much cash in the ecosystem that I think that people should be reassured” even after last week’s drop in stocks, he said. “Sometimes things need to go down a little bit” after a big run-up, he said of markets. “But I don’t think that there’s a risk of a wholesale selloff at all.”