Cramer bets AI spending will 'continue apace,' says he's not giving up on data center trade

CNBC's Jim Cramer said he doesn't see AI spending slowing, despite growing concerns about the pace of model development.

ShanonG

Sep 17, 2026 - 05:17

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Cramer bets AI spending will 'continue apace,' says he's not giving up on data center trade

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Mad Money

Published Wed, Sep 16 20267:00 PM EDT

Key Points

CNBC's Jim Cramer said he doesn't anticipate an AI slowdown, despite growing concerns about the pace of model development. "There's too much money at stake for them to stop now," the "Mad Money" host said.

CNBC's Jim Cramer said Wednesday that he's sticking with the AI trade despite a turbulent few days on growing safety concerns.

After spending the week at Salesforce's annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco and speaking with some of the biggest names in AI, Cramer said he expects spending on the technology to continue despite an intensifying debate over whether the AI industry is moving too quickly in developing powerful models.

That debate accelerated after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay over the weekend calling for frontier AI labs to slow model development to give safety measures more time to catch up.

"I think the spending will proceed apace," the "Mad Money" host said, because Anthropic and OpenAI are growing revenue as a result of their investments. "They aren't gonna slow down the important parts of their business. Honestly, I doubt they'll slow down much at all, because there's too much money at stake for them to stop now."

"That's why after the Fed fallout abates I think these companies that make components for the data center are all buys," he added.

Cramer acknowledged the risks raised by Amodei and said additional safeguards may be necessary. But he doesn't expect those concerns to derail AI spending.

He said increasingly capable AI agents could also strengthen demand for cybersecurity. "For that I have to rely on Palo Alto, Okta, CrowdStrike and others to be one step ahead of the enemy. Historically, that's been a safe bet," he said.

Ultimately, Cramer said his conversations at Dreamforce left him confident the industry has time to address AI's risks without bringing development to a halt. "I asked every exec if I should get ready for the death sentence in 2030 … I came away thinking we have some time to fix things," Cramer said, "but we have to fix them no matter what."

Cramer's Charitable Trust, the portfolio run by CNBC's Investing Club, owns shares of CRWD and PANW.