Leopoldo Alejandro Betancourt López put a large sum into an artificial intelligence company years before the technology had a mass-market product. He has declined to name the company, citing confidentiality, but he has described how the position performed.

“I did a big ticket on it and now it’s 20 times its investment,” he said in a recent interview, adding that he made the bet “about five years ago,” that at the time “it wasn’t a big thing,” and that “now it’s exploding.”

Before the Chatbot Moment

ChatGPT reached an estimated 100 million monthly active users in January 2023, two months after its launch. UBS called it the fastest-growing consumer application on record, Reuters reported. “In 20 years following the internet space, we cannot recall a faster ramp in a consumer internet app,” UBS analysts wrote. The service drew about 13 million unique visitors a day that January, according to Similarweb.

Corporate investment in AI reached a record $581.69 billion in 2025, Stanford University’s 2026 AI Index found, led by $344.66 billion in private investment. By his own timeline, Alejandro Betancourt López’s stake predates both milestones by at least two years.

How Alejandro Betancourt López Describes the Win

“I think I got lucky,” he said of the AI position. He “thought it was a great idea” when he committed the money, he added. Elsewhere he has described a broader knack. “I have been lucky enough to be accurate in predicting where the profits are going to come from,” he said in a separate interview.

Speaking about Tesla and SpaceX in early 2022, he said traditional valuation models struggle when “these brands or these companies can capture those future values that are not in equation.” A private company valued on today’s revenue can look expensive for years before that future value shows up.

He described the digital revolution as one that will be “as world-changing as industrial revolution, but even faster and more aggressive,” with “a lot of winners, a lot of losers” along the way.

Alejandro Betancourt López said the group plans to be more involved in AI and in robotics and technology manufacturing. He called those riskier fields with bigger potential rewards.

Alejandro Betancourt has not said when or whether he plans to sell the AI stake. He holds it through the same family office as his older investments in eyewear, private-hire transport and padel software.