Intense stimulated Brillouin scattering produced by high‐power (greater than 107W/cm2) light beams is discussed in this paper. It is shown theoretically that the Brillouin intensity increases exponentially with the incident light intensity, with the interaction length, and with a gain factor depending on the medium properties. Quantitative estimates of the stimulated Brillouin scattering have been obtained from experiments using traveling waves and amplifying systems.