Why AI will be as revolutionary as the advent of electricity

Yahoo Finance Video and Josh Lipton

Fri, February 20, 2026 at 10:00 PM GMT+9

In this video:

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While the growth rate of the AI Revolution has long been compared to the Dot-Com Boom and subsequent bubble, Hamilton Lane (HLNE) Co-CEO Erik Hirsch thinks artificial intelligence is more akin to the harnessing of electricity.

Hirsch sits down with Market Domination Overtime Host Josh Lipton to explain this historical comparison.

To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination Overtime.

Video Transcript

00:00 Josh

Eric, it’s good to see you. Maybe, maybe we should just start right there, Eric. You you compare AI AI here to electricity, not the dot-com bubble. Start there, Eric. Explain that comparison to me.

00:13 Eric

Yeah, Josh, great to be back with you. I think the dot-com era was a huge advent of change, but to say that it impacted every single business is simply not true. It also disrupted jobs but in many cases just caused that position to move from one kind of retail store to a different kind of Amazon-oriented building. But that wasn’t wiping out jobs.

00:43 Eric

I think the advent of electricity is a much better analogy where that sort of ushered in the Second Industrial Revolution and it truly changed everything. It changed how society operated, it changed where societies were located, it changed supply chains, it changed how cities were built, and it brought with it the advent of all kinds of new innovations, whether it was the refrigerator or the elevator, but things that had massive impact on society, I think that’s the better analogy.

01:21 Eric

So, I think we got to go back to the mid 1800s, study sort of what was happening then around electricity and then how that really changed the entire global infrastructure. That’s going to be a much better way to study this and to think about this from an investment perspective.

01:40 Josh

So Eric, if you’re right and AI does represent this truly, listen, historic, structural, decades long paradigm shift, how do you think through it, Eric, where the smart opportunities are for investors?

01:58 Eric

Well, I think if we go back to the electricity analogy, you had tremendous opportunities for investing because things that couldn’t exist without electricity all of a sudden then could. I think this will be similar. So, I think you’re going to see new places for investment opportunity. I think this is also an opportunity and a time to get behind good management teams.

02:22 Eric

I think in this kind of a world where change is occurring rapidly and the skill set is really, can you see around corners, can you look into the future? That’s a management team thing. That’s not a question of whether you’re buying a business for half a turn less or half a turn more. That’s a, do you have the right management team with the vision and the ability to pivot and adjust in a rapidly changing environment? That’s what the private markets look for and so I think this will be a lot of good opportunity coming.

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