Wall Street priced an AI apocalypse in software, but Jim Cramer says reality is less dire

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Jim Cramer cuts through the AI market noise

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CNBC’s Jim Cramer said Wednesday that he believes plenty of software companies will survive the threat of AI disruption, rejecting the most doomsday predictions.

Still, he cautioned that investors also shouldn’t hold their breathes for a return to the glory days when investors paid major premiums for their stocks.

“The software companies are survivors. They can merge. They can adapt. They can do whatever is really necessary to get it so they stay in business,” Cramer said Wednesday on “Mad Money,” but he added, “they’re priced for perfection though and they do seem to have, let’s say, kind of a rugby-scrum feel about them — and we don’t pay up for scrum.”

He referenced a blog post published earlier this week by Citrini Research that became the latest catalyst for an AI-related sell-off in software and, to a lesser degree, other sectors. The post examined what the U.S. could look like in 2028 if AI hollowed out white-collar jobs, crushed per-seat software models and triggered a domino effect across private equity and the broader economy. While explicitly called a hypothetical and not a prediction, the Citrini post nevertheless sent shockwaves across Wall Street.

Cramer said the market response was overblown.

“Yes, Wall Street can overreact better than anyone,” he said, arguing the stock market took a legitimate concern (that AI could pressure margins and slow growth at enterprise software firms) and turned it into an extinction event.

He does expect real consequences, though, and investors cannot brush them off entirely. Software companies that were once “priced to perfection” will likely trade at lower price-to-earnings multiples as AI compresses pricing power and revenue growth, he said. But lower multiples don’t mean collapse. Cramer believes they can deploy AI themselves and cut costs and adapt to the competitive landscape.

Meanwhile, he said the sell-off unfairly punished parts of the market that stand the benefit from AI-driven productivity including banks, travel companies and select retailers.

At the center of that productivity is Nvidia, whose chips are enabling faster, cheaper compute – a dynamic that Cramer said points to a reshaping of the economy, not the destruction of it. Nvidia’s fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday night topped expectations, as did its guidance for its ongoing fiscal first quarter.

That strong performance demonstrates how AI “demand is off the charts,” Cramer said, suggesting it’s a a major win for the economy. He concluded, “for all the handwringing about how AI will be an engine of wealth destruction, it’s hard to deny that it’s also an incredible vehicle of wealth creation.”

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