Investor Ray Dalio told CNBC on Thursday the coronavirus outbreak will cost U.S. corporations up to $4 trillion, and "a lot of people are going to be broke."

"What's happening has not happened in our lifetime before ... What we have is a crisis," Dalio said in a "Squawk Box" interview. "There will also be individuals who have very big losses. ... There's a need for the government to spend more money, a lot more money."

The total U.S. GDP at the end of 2019 was more than $21 trillion. The founder of the Bridgewater Associates hedge fund also estimated the global corporate losses will amount to $12 trillion due to the pandemic.

Dalio said the fiscal stimulus package should be $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion at a minimum, depending on the form of the financial relief such as loan guarantees and credits.

The White House is proposing a stimulus package worth anywhere from $850 billion to more than $1 trillion to fight the impact of COVID-19 and to help soften the blow of a sudden recession. The package will include direct payments or tax cuts and small business assistance.

On the monetary front, the Federal Reserve announced plans to pump an additional $1 trillion into the U.S. economy through asset purchases and to cut interest rates to zero. Global central banks have also taken steps to keep borrowing costs in check as countries get ready to ramp up spending to offset coronavirus impact.

However, Dalio said there's an "inability of central banks to stimulate in a way that's normal," adding they have less capacity to ease monetary policies when interest rates have already hit the floor.

"We are now at a point where there will have to be a debt restructuring and a monetization of that," Dalio said. "We're living in a different world, like the 1930s in which 1930s, 1932, you have a devaluation of the dollar. You have the printing of money."