All posts tagged: bubble

The AI Bubble Is No Ordinary Bubble

The AI Bubble Is No Ordinary Bubble

Published by Daniella Wilson

The American stock market is booming, thanks to artificial intelligence. Tech giants are borrowing billions to acquire AI talent, purchase chips and hardware, and construct data centers. And market watchers are starting to get worried. They see financiers bulldozing giant piles of money to private AI start-ups with no realistic path to profitability, tech companies reliant on other tech companies for revenue growth, and non-tech businesses without a lot to show for their AI investments. The value of AI-linked firms has climbed $27 trillion in the past three years—an astonishing amount, equivalent to 36 percent of the value of the entire U.S. stock market today. Although future earnings could justify those valuations, as Dominic Wilson and Vickie Chang of Goldman Sachs argued in a note to clients, the profit expectations require Panglossian optimism. No less an authority than Sam Altman is arguing that we are in an AI bubble. The International Monetary Fund is citing it as a significant risk to financial stability and warning about what might happen when it bursts: diminished investment, tighter …

Was SK Hynix’s US Debut The AI Bubble Top? BNP Says It’s Still 1998

Was SK Hynix’s US Debut The AI Bubble Top? BNP Says It’s Still 1998

Published by Jenni Sidey

With SK Hynix’s American depositary receipts now trading under the temporary ticker SKHYV as of late Friday morning, the seven-times-oversubscribed offering highlights Wall Street’s rush for more direct exposure to high-bandwidth memory amid the AI infrastructure boom. Against the backdrop of mounting concerns about an AI infrastructure bubble, Roth Capital Partners’ sales trading team asked clients earlier Friday: “How will investors, looking back two years from now, view the timing and significance of SK Hynix’s US offering?” Taking a look at the GS TMT Memory Exposed Index (GSTMTMEM Index), Goldman Sachs’ thematic basket tracking companies with high exposure to the memory chip cycle, the trade appears to have peaked in mid-June. Zooming in on the recent price action in the GSTMTMEM Index: That rollover has since spread into the broader South Korean market, with the Kospi entering a bear market this week as the memory stock euphoria begins to fade. Adding to the AI bubble doomerism camp is UBS’ proprietary Market Fragility Index, an internal risk gauge measuring how vulnerable markets are to a sharp …

Is AI ‘one big bubble’? Behind the tech sell-off

Is AI ‘one big bubble’? Behind the tech sell-off

Published by Sam Flores

The tech-heavy Nasdaq stock index has lately been on a roller coaster. In this photo taken in 2000, a woman walks past the Nasdaq sign in New York City’s Times Square. Chris Hondros/Getty Images/Hulton Archive hide caption toggle caption Chris Hondros/Getty Images/Hulton Archive Stay up to date with NPR’s Up First newsletter, sent every weekday morning. A wave of selling in tech stocks is starting to reflect doubts over whether the spending boom on artificial intelligence is worth it. The best-known AI-related tech stocks, Nvidia and Google-parent Alphabet, were down for a second day in a row. Among the biggest losers on Tuesday, however, was chipmaker Micron Technology, whose shares plummeted over 13%. These sell-offs sent the tech-heavy Nasdaq index down over 2%. Micron’s stock is the perfect representation of what’s going on in the stock market. It has skyrocketed in value in the past year — up close to 800% — on soaring demand for memory chips from the AI build-out, showcasing the massive valuations for AI-related stocks. “The market just continues to oscillate …

Maybe AI Isn’t a Bubble After All

Maybe AI Isn’t a Bubble After All

Published by Sam Flores

Six months ago, the AI sector was looking pretty bubbly. Companies were plowing hundreds of billions of dollars, much of it borrowed, into building new data centers, but had no clear path to profitability. Experts and journalists, myself included, were comparing the AI build-out to the railroad bubble of the 1800s and the dot-com bubble of the ’90s, in which speculation led to overinvestment that eventually crashed the stock market. Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman voiced public doubts. “Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI?” he said last year. “My opinion is yes.” Today, however, we’re in a very different world. Software developers are adopting AI tools en masse and reporting astronomical productivity benefits. The worry that the country is building too many data centers now coexists with the fear that we won’t have enough of them to satisfy the public’s growing appetite for these products. And the company previously known as OpenAI’s junior competitor has become possibly the fastest-growing business in the history of capitalism. Anthropic’s revenue …

De Minaur bursts Bublik bubble to reach Melbourne quarter-finals again

De Minaur bursts Bublik bubble to reach Melbourne quarter-finals again

Published by Sam Flores

MELBOURNE, Jan 25 : Australian number one Alex de Minaur pierced 10th-seeded Kazakh Alexander Bublik’s defences with relentless pressure to secure a 6‑4 6‑1 6-1 win on Sunday and reach a second straight Australian Open quarter-final and seventh at the Grand Slams overall. De Minaur, who is looking to become the first Australian man to claim the Norman Brookes Challenge Cup since Mark Edmondson 50 years ago, will face top seed Carlos Alcaraz seeking a maiden win over the Spaniard for a place in the semi-finals. “The last two matches I have hit the ball extremely well,” said De Minaur. “So I’m super pleased with my level, I’m excited for the next one. That’s going to be a big one, right? I’m going to have to come out all guns blazing and I’m excited for a battle against Carlitos.” The first meeting between two top-10 men’s players at the Melbourne Park major this year pitted Bublik’s unpredictability against De Minaur’s court coverage, and it was the Australian who landed the first blow by winning a …

The Generative AI Bubble Has Begun to Pop

The Generative AI Bubble Has Begun to Pop

Published by Jenni Sidey

Generative AI has dominated the tech news over the last two years. More than 50% of venture capital funding goes to generative AI, which I distinguish from predictive AI, the older and, at one time, the more researched form of AI. Announcements and news from the big consulting firms and top business schools are also dominated by generative AI. The profit figures suggest that they are the most profitable organizations within AI outside of Nvidia. Nirvana, doomsday or — bubble Bubbles 1 Adobe Stock licensed Much of the AI discourse in the media was previously split between nirvana, doomsday and bubble. Recently, talk of a bubble has increased as it has become clear that OpenAI, and likely other AI software companies, may never become profitable. The startup losses are bigger than we have ever seen and the fact that the startups are not required to release audited earnings like public companies do, means that the losses are likely much bigger than the announcements.  Analyses of Microsoft’s third quarter earnings in 2025 confirm this. Nevertheless, some …

Is the AI bubble about to burst? What to watch for as the markets wobble

Is the AI bubble about to burst? What to watch for as the markets wobble

Published by Miika Tikkanen

The global investment frenzy around AI has seen companies valued at trillions of dollars and eye-watering projections of how it will boost economic productivity. But in recent weeks the mood has begun to shift. Investors and CEOs are now openly questioning whether the enormous costs of building and running AI systems can really be justified by future revenues. Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, has spoken of “irrationality” in AI’s growth, while others have said some projects are proving to be more complex and expensive than expected. Meanwhile, global stock markets have declined, with tech shares taking a particular hit, and the value of cryptocurrencies has dipped as investors appear increasingly nervous. So how should we view the health of the AI sector? Well, bubbles in technology are not new. There have been great rises and great falls in the dot-com world, and surges in popularity for certain tech platforms (during COVID for example) which have then flattened out. Each of these technological shifts was real, but they became bubbles when excitement about their potential ran far …