Mark Cuban predicted an army of young people would have to spread AI — and tech gurus agree

Tech billionaire Mark Cuban predicts an army of young people will be needed to teach company bosses how to use AI. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images 2026-02-16T13:27:45.565Z Share Copy link Email Facebook WhatsApp X LinkedIn Bluesky Threads lighning bolt icon An icon in the shape of a lightning bolt.

Impact Link Save Saved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Log in. Mark Cuban says implementing AI will be a generational job opportunity for young people. Over the weekend, AI experts picked up on Cuban's prediction during an interview last year. The tech billionaire said students should learn various AI tools and how companies can use them. Mark Cuban expects legions of workers will be needed to implement AI at companies, creating a huge opportunity for tech-savvy young people. The tech billionaire and former "Shark Tank" investor made the prediction during an August interview with TBPN, a tech talk show and podcast.AI guru Rohan Paul shared a clip of Cuban's comments over the weekend, which was widely reposted; Cuban himself shared three responses from other AI gurus on his X feed. One declared it the "MOST underrated clip on the internet right now." Another drew a parallel to Salesforce and the millions of administrative and integration roles it spawned. A third heralded a shift from generic software to customized intelligence.Cuban is calling the IT services boom of the 2000s, but for intelligence instead of infrastructure. Every wave of business technology from PCs to cloud to mobile spawned a massive local services layer. The AI wave needs the same thing, and 33 million companies are waiting. The… https://t.co/sgBXH1VJLd— Aakash Gupta (@aakashgupta) February 15, 2026 Cuban told TBPN that when he was 24, he would walk into companies and executives would point to their secretaries and receptionists and say they didn't need a PC. Cuban recognized that as an opportunity to sell old-school bosses on the benefits of computers and teach them how to use them. He said it's a similar situation with the latest tech wave, which some believe will render millions of human workers obsolete and trigger mass unemployment.Cuban said he advises high-school and college students to not just "learn all you can about AI, but learn more on how to implement them in companies." Cuban, a minority owner of the Dallas Mavericks, said that tens of millions of US companies don't have AI budgets or AI experts."This is where kids getting hired coming out of college are really going to have a unique opportunity," he said. They should spend their free time learning how to use different AI tools, make AI videos, and customize AI models so they can teach business leaders in any industry how to harness the tech, he added. "That is every single job that's going to be available for kids coming out of school because every single company needs that," Cuban said. "There is nothing intuitive for a company to integrate AI and that's what people don't understand."Cuban emphasized the opportunity isn't limited to software engineers. Many older workers are "afraid" to ask complex questions to AI models, he said, unlike "kids coming out of school today that are fearless in the questions they ask and the followups and their ability to prompt." "That's jobs for everybody," he added.