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Tag: Tech Bubble

  • Is the AI boom a bubble waiting to pop? Here’s what history says | Fortune

    As the artificial intelligence trade continues to push the stock market to new highs, investors are increasingly asking if we’re living through another financial bubble that’s destined to burst. 

    The answer isn’t so simple, at least according to history.

    The S&P 500 Index jumped 16% in 2025, with AI winners Nvidia Corp., Alphabet Inc., Broadcom Inc. and Microsoft Corp. contributing the most. But at the same time, concerns are mounting about the hundreds of billions of dollars Big Tech has pledged to spend on AI infrastructure. Capital expenditures from Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon.com Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc. are expected to rise 34% to roughly $440 billion combined over the next year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. 

    Meanwhile, OpenAI has committed to spending more than $1 trillion on AI infrastructure, an eye-popping number for a closely held company that isn’t profitable. But perhaps even more troubling is the circular nature of many of its arrangements, in which investments and spending go back and forth between OpenAI and a few publicly traded tech giants.

    Throughout history, over-investment has been a common theme when there’s a technological advancement that will transform society, according to Invesco chief global market strategist Brian Levitt, who pointed to the development of railroads, electricity and the internet. This time may be no different.

    “At some point the infrastructure build may exceed what the economy will need over a short period of time,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean that the rail tracks weren’t finished or the internet didn’t become a thing, right?”

    Still, with equity valuations creeping up and the S&P 500 just posting its third straight year of double-digit percentage gains, it makes sense that investors are growing concerned about how much upside is left and how much market value could be lost if AI doesn’t live up to the hype. Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon.com, Broadcom and Meta Platforms account for almost 30% of the S&P 500, so an AI selloff would hit the index hard.  

    “A bubble likely crashes on a bear market,” said Gene Goldman, chief investment officer at Cetera Financial Group, who doesn’t believe AI stocks are in a bubble. “We just don’t see a bear market anytime soon.” 

    Here’s how today’s AI boom stacks up against previous market bubbles. 

    Pace, Length

    One simple way of gaging whether the AI-fueled tech rally has gone too far or too fast is to compare it against past bull runs. Looking at 10 equity bubbles from around the world since 1900, they lasted just over two-and-a-half years on average with a trough-to-peak gain of 244%, according to research by Bank of America strategist Michael Hartnett.

    By comparison, the AI-driven rally is in its third year, with the S&P 500 rising 79% since the end of 2022 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 Index gaining 130%. 

    While it’s difficult to draw any conclusions from the data, Hartnett warns investors against fleeing the stock market even if they believe it’s in a bubble because the last stretch of the rally is typically the steepest, and missing out would be costly. One way to hedge is to buy cheap value plays like UK stocks and energy companies, he said.

    Concentration

    The S&P 500’s 10 biggest stocks now account for roughly 40% of the index, a level of concentration not seen since the 1960s. That has put some investors off, including Wall Street research veteran Ed Yardeni, who said in December that it no longer makes sense to recommend overweighting tech stocks.

    Market historians argue that, while the concentration seems extreme relative to recent memory, there are precedents. Top stocks as a share of the US market were at similar levels in the 1930s and 1960s, according to London Business School professor Paul Marsh, who studied the past 125 years of global asset returns. In 1900, 63% of US market value was tied to railroad stocks, compared with 37% tied to technology at the end of 2024, Marsh said.

    Fundamentals

    Asset bubbles tend to be much harder to spot in real time than after the fact because fundamentals are usually at the center of the debate, and the metrics investors focus on can be fluid, according to TS Lombard economist Dario Perkins. 

    “It is easy for tech enthusiasts to claim that ‘it’s different now’ and that fundamental valuations will never be the same again,” he said.

    But some fundamentals are always important. For example, compared with the dot-com bubble, today’s AI giants have lower debt-to-earnings ratios than, say, WorldCom Inc. And companies like Nvidia and Meta Platforms are already reporting strong profit growth from AI, which wasn’t necessarily the case in the speculative era 25 years ago.

    The potential for credit risk in the AI trade is making some investors nervous. After Oracle Corp. sold $18 billion in bonds on Sept. 24, the stock plunged 5.6% the next day and it’s down 37% since then. Meta, Alphabet and Oracle will need to raise $86 billion combined in 2026 alone, according to an estimate by Societe Generale. 

    Valuations

    The S&P 500’s valuation is the highest it’s ever been except for the early 2000s, at least according to its cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio, a metric invented by economist Robert Shiller that divides a stock price by the average of its inflation-adjusted earnings over the past 10 years. 

    Bullish investors argue that while market valuations are rising because of tech, the pace of increase is much slower than the dot-com era. At one point in 2000, Cisco Systems Inc. was priced at over 200 times its previous 12 months of earnings, while Nvidia is at less than 50 times today. 

    Stock prices decouple from earnings growth in an environment where there’s no debate on valuations, according to Richard Clode, a fund manager at Janus Henderson. “We’re just not seeing that currently as yet,” he said.

    Investor Scrutiny

    Discussions of a potential stock bubble percolated throughout the year but picked up significantly in November and December amid warnings from investor Michael Burry and the Bank of England. More than 12,000 stories in November mentioned the phrase “AI bubble,” roughly equal to the prior ten months combined, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

    Investors see an AI bubble as the biggest “tail risk” event, a December poll by Bank of America showed. More than half of the respondents said the Magnificent Seven tech stocks were Wall Street’s most crowded trade.

    This contrasts with the dot-com bubble, when there was “complete excitement about the internet revolutionizing everything,” said Venu Krishna, head of US equity strategy at Barclays. And the questions about whether AI investments will pay off are increasing as the debt issuance rises.

    “I wouldn’t brush it off, but I would generally think that scrutiny is healthy,” he said. “In fact, that scrutiny is what will prevent extreme moves like a crash.”

    Henry Ren, Carmen Reinicke, Bloomberg

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  • ‘Dr. Doom’ Nouriel Roubini breaks with the crowd on the AI bubble, saying the U.S. is headed for a ‘growth recession’ and not a market crash | Fortune

    For nearly two decades, esteemed economist Nouriel Roubini has worn the nickname “Dr. Doom” with honor. He earned it in the mid-2000s for warning of a housing crash that Wall Street dismissed, until he was proven catastrophically right. 

    Since then, the NYU Stern School of Business professor emeritus has become one of the most recognizable bears in global finance, regularly sounding alarms about debt spirals, geopolitical shocks, pandemics, AI disruptions, and what he once called “the mother of all crises.”

    So it’s perhaps surprising, even disorienting, that in the midst of investors teetering on the edge of a bear market, Roubini is breaking with his cohort — including fellow 2008-financial-crisis-prophet Michael Burry — to dismiss their pessimism about the U.S. economy as misplaced.

    In a new essay for the Financial Times, the economist argues that the conventional view – that America’s “Liberation Day” tariffs would trigger stagflation, tank the stock market, kneecap the dollar, and end U.S. exceptionalism — is simply wrong. Instead, he sees something close to the opposite: a short period of cooling growth, followed by a powerful rebound led by technology and capital spending that keeps the U.S. firmly in the top spot.

    “The now common view that the U.S. stock market is in a massive bubble and bound to crash is incorrect over the medium term,” he wrote. On the other hand, what he predicted isn’t necessarily the rosiest. The near-term picture looks like a “growth recession,’ he said, meaning slower, below-potential GDP. It’s not the hard landing or 1970s-style stagflation many have predicted, and it isn’t a bubble popping, but it’s a lopsided economy, as many Wall Street analysts have also noticed.

    Tariffs won’t topple the recovery

    Roubini, who once warned of a “mega-threatened age” – the era where AI, aging populations and global instability threatened our prosperity — now argues the most extreme fears about tariffs and policy missteps haven’t materialized. That’s partly because, he says, this administration is responsive to market reactions. When asset prices slumped immediately after the tariff announcement, the administration “blinked,” softening policy and opening the door to more conventional trade negotiations.

    By next year, he says, growth will reaccelerate. The Fed is undergoing a period of monetary easing, fiscal stimulus is still flowing, and—critically—AI-related capital expenditure continues to surge.

    Roubini’s arguments align closely with two of Wall Street’s top analysts: Torsten Slok from Apollo Global Management and Mike Wilson from Morgan Stanley. Slok, known for his “Daily Spark,” combining insightful charts with brevity, argued on November 20 that the economy is “likely to reaccelerate in 2026.” Just days earlier, he had warned of inequality, saying “it is a K-shaped economy for U.S. consumers.” He has also flagged extreme concentration and valuations in the stock market, with the Magnificent 7 running far ahead of the rest of the market. 

    Wilson, chief equity strategist for Morgan Stanley, has been predicting a “rolling recession” for years, arguing that different sectors of the economy shrank at different times, resulting in something that felt like a recession, but unevenly distributed. This changed in April 2022, when a “rolling recovery” set in, he has argued since then, forecasting an economic boom ahead. Wilson has argued for the possibility of a correction in stocks but, like Roubini, does not see a crash as imminent. 

    Tech > tariffs

    The core of Roubini’s argument rests on a simple hierarchy: tariffs and policy noise are temporary, but technological leadership that results in innovation compounding over decades is not.

    “Tech trumps tariffs,” he writes.

    He estimates U.S. potential growth could double from 2% to 4% by the end of the decade, powered by innovation in AI and machine learning, robotics, quantum computing, commercial space, and defense technology. While this agrees with many Wall Street predictions (Goldman Sachs sees real potential growth reaching 2.3% in the early 2030s, for instance), the prediction of 4% blows most others out of the water. 

    However, those industries, Roubini argues, will continue to deliver the “exceptionalism” that has set the U.S. apart for the past 20 years, to the extent to which productivity will boost the economy out double-digits. 

    If potential growth rises, he says, equity returns should, too. When growth averaged only 2% over the last two decades, annual returns still hovered in the double digits. Faster growth means even faster earnings expansion, and valuations that look elevated today may be supported rather than speculative.

    Roubini has been striking a more positive tone for about a year now — in August 2024, while everyone feared a downturn was coming and frustrated that the Fed wouldn’t ease, he calmed market fears again. 

    Debt—and the dollar—look less dangerous than feared

    One of the most persistent fears around AI-driven spending is debt sustainability. But Roubini argues that this math would change if growth rises even modestly.

    The Congressional Budget Office projects debt-to-GDP soaring under 1.6% real growth assumptions. But if growth averages 2.3% or higher, the ratio stabilizes. At 3% or more, it falls, meaning that we could potentially grow ourselves out of debt; an argument President Donald Trump has also used.

    A tech-driven “supply shock”could also push inflation lower over time as production costs drop while productivity booms, meaning higher real rates may not translate into higher nominal yields.Even external liabilities look manageable, he argues, because rising tech investment tends to attract foreign equity inflows, similar to how “emerging-market” economies finance growth during a resource boom.

    Roubini also dismisses the widely discussed decline of the dollar, since he believes that the U.S. will accelerate while Europe stagnates, and thus the dollar will ultimately strengthen. 

    Notably, “Dr. Doom” admitted that the U.S.’s top adversary, China, is at least on par with the U.S. in innovating in the “most important industries of the future,” such as AI and robotics. However, he doesn’t seem too concerned with the AI arms race. 

    “The US economy and markets are best positioned among advanced economies,” Roubini wrote. “They will continue to benefit from the US being the most innovative advanced country.”

    Eva Roytburg, Nick Lichtenberg

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  • Nvidia CEO says the company is in a no-win situation amid AI-bubble chatter, leaked meeting reveals | Fortune

    Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told employees this week that the company has been pushed into a no-win situation by mounting fears of an AI bubble, even as it continues to post blockbuster results, according to audio of an internal all-hands meeting reviewed by Business Insider.

    “The market did not appreciate our incredible quarter,” Huang said on Thursday, less than 24 hours after Nvidia reported another set of record earnings and said it had “visibility” into half a trillion dollars of revenue lined up for the rest of 2025 and 2026.

    Instead of rewarding the beat, investors delivered a shocking reversal that saw shares briefly rising Thursday before turning lower, dragging down the broader AI trade by the end of the session.

    Huang said expectations around Nvidia have become so extreme that Wall Street now sees danger in both directions.

    “If we delivered a bad quarter, it is evidence there’s an AI bubble. If we delivered a great quarter, we are fueling the AI bubble,” he told employees. “If we were off by just a hair, if it looked even a little bit creaky, the whole world would’ve fallen apart.”

    The comments offer a rare glimpse into how the face of the AI boom views the growing backlash to it, and how closely he is watching the market’s whiplash response.

    A blowout quarter that spooked investors

    On paper, Nvidia gave investors about everything they had asked for. The chipmaker reported another surge in sales of its data-center processors, the workhorses that power large AI models (and Nvidia’s revenues), and raised its guidance for the current quarter. It was the kind of performance expected to kick off another six-month rally, investors were saying. 

    Instead, the stock’s initial jump gave way to a broad selloff. Nvidia climbed as much as 5% early in Thursday’s session before closing down roughly 3%, as traders rotated out of the Big Tech names most closely associated with the AI boom. 

    The reversal extended what has become a bruising stretch for the so-called AI trade. After months of a breathless rally, investors are increasingly anxious that tech giants are spending too aggressively on data centers, GPUs, and networking gear, with no guarantee they can earn enough revenue to get those investments back. Some are also focusing on the complex, debt-heavy financing structures behind the AI infrastructure build-out, with credit markets starting to flash early warning signs.

    Layered on top of that are fresh macro jitters. A shutdown-delayed U.S. jobs report, released the same morning, showed stronger-than-expected hiring in September, but a higher unemployment rate; this conflicting data did little to clarify whether the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates in December.

    Some investors are closely watching different statements from Fed presidents to try to read the tea leaves, but with the earnings season winding down and no obvious catalyst between now and the Fed’s next decision, it appears that many other investors are using the volatility to lock in profits from the year’s earlier rally—and get out of the market.

    “The broader narrative hasn’t broken; it’s simply being tested right now,” Mark Hackett at Nationwide told Bloomberg. “Periods like this often act as a release valve rather than signaling a true trend reversal.” 

    ‘We’re basically holding the planet together’

    Inside Nvidia, Huang suggested no one should be surprised that investors are jumpy when so much of the AI story is being projected onto a single company.

    He referenced online memes that jokingly describe Nvidia as the linchpin of the global economy and the only thing standing between the U.S. and recession.

    “Have you guys seen some of them?” he asked employees. “We’re basically holding the planet together—and it’s not untrue.”

    That level of mythos has helped propel Nvidia’s market value into the stratosphere, making it the world’s most valuable public company. But Huang made clear that it has also turned every earnings day into a high-wire act.

    “The expectations are so high that if we miss by just a little bit, people think the whole story is broken,” he said.

    Still, Huang pushed back on the idea that Nvidia is responsible for the frothier parts of the AI trade. The company’s job, he emphasized, is to build the compute infrastructure others need, not to police how the market prices demand.

    Joking about losing $500 billion

    Amid the pressure, Huang kept the meeting light with whistling-past-the-graveyard-esque humor about Nvidia’s wild swings.

    He joked about the “good old days” when the company had a $5 trillion market capitalization, a playful exaggeration of its actual peak valuation—before noting just how much value has evaporated in recent weeks.

    “Nobody in history has ever lost $500 billion in a few weeks,” he said. “You’ve got to be worth a lot to lose $500 billion in a few weeks.”

    Huang told employees he was “delighted” by the quarter and proud of their work, stressing the company’s underlying business remains strong even if markets are punishing them for it.

    Eva Roytburg

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  • Are we in an AI bubble? How to protect your portfolio if your AI investments turn against you.

    Despite stellar earnings reports from Nvidia (NVDA) this week and record returns of tech stocks related to artificial intelligence so far this year, there is still a lot of hand-wringing about a possible AI bubble.

    The 70 stocks that comprise the Global X Artificial Intelligence & Technology ETF (AIQ) have lost $2.4 trillion in value since Oct. 29, according to an Investor’s Business Daily analysis.

    The November 2025 Bank of America Global Fund Manager Survey reported 45% of respondents believe an AI equity bubble is the most significant current market risk. More than half of the money managers believed AI stocks are already in bubble territory.

    Are we approaching an AI bubble? And if that’s uncertain, how do you protect your portfolio if your AI investments turn against you?

    Read more: Thinking of buying Nvidia stock? Consider buying others just like it.

    Past failures often haunt stock market investors. The dot-com bust of the late 1990s and early 2000s is a recurring nightmare for some. Are we approaching a similar stock market cliff? Two noted analysts disagree.

    Carolyn Barnette, head of market and portfolio insights at BlackRock, doesn’t see the symptoms of a dot-com crash. Today’s AI investments are “a fundamentally different landscape — one supported by real profitability, disciplined capital allocation, and broad-based adoption,” she wrote in a report to advisors last week.

    “Unlike the speculative frenzy of the late 1990s and early 2000s, today’s technology leaders are anchored by fundamental stability. Strong profitability, steady cash generation, and healthy balance sheets provide a foundation for continued investment and growth,” Barnette wrote in the analysis.

    Barnette notes that, unlike the dot-coms, AI capital investments are being funded by earnings and cash rather than debt.

    “This self-financing makes the sector more resilient to higher interest rates and less vulnerable to liquidity shocks. Many companies are investing from a position of strength, not speculation,” Barnette wrote.

    Yet, many experts with their own charts disagree, saying we are in an AI investment bubble.

    One is Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Sløk.

    “The difference between the IT bubble in the 1990s and the AI bubble today is that the top 10 companies in the S&P 500 today are more overvalued than they were in the 1990s,” Sløk wrote in a July analysis.

    Sløk believes the overheated AI sector was born out of the zero-interest-rate environment before March 2022. When the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates, tech companies stopped hiring, borrowing costs rose, and investor risk appetites diminished.

    “The bottom line is that the bubble in AI valuations was simply the result of a long period with zero interest rates,” Sløk wrote in May. “With upward pressures on inflation coming from tariffs, deglobalization, and demographics, interest rates will remain high and continue to be a headwind to tech and growth for the coming years.” (Disclosure: Yahoo Finance is owned by Apollo Global Management.)

    AI bubble

    Read more: Create a stock investing strategy in 3 steps

    If the experts disagree, perhaps it’s best to prepare for both AI scenarios: boom and bubble.

    Kevin Gordon, Schwab’s senior investment strategist, said investors should first determine what kind of AI investments they hold.

    “I think one of the ways to hedge and diversify around [the risk] is actually thinking about the difference and the important distinction between the AI creators and the AI adopters,” Gordon said in a Schwab video released in September. “So much of the focus over the past couple of years has been on the creators. We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about who are the ‘adopters’ and who could benefit from the technology.”

    He believes adopters are going to become a critical next leg of the investment cycle for industries that don’t have the ability to be an AI creator. Consider diversifying your portfolio with those who benefit from the technology rather than those who create it.

    Gordon also believes investors should periodically revisit their investment time horizon and risk tolerance. When will you begin tapping your investments for cash, and are your investments built for that inevitability?

    “I think this is one of those moments where you need to look at your portfolio to see where those align,” Gordon said.

    The UBS chief investment office recommends international exposure, high-grade bonds, and gold to protect a portfolio.

    “We think the equity bull market has further room to run, and have reiterated that an easing Federal Reserve, durable earnings growth, and AI investment spending support our attractive view on US equities. But we also believe investors should diversify their portfolios beyond US equities,” UBS said in a note to clients.

    UBS highlighted three “appealing opportunities”:

    • China’s tech sector and Japanese equities: “We particularly like China’s tech sector as we believe Beijing’s push for tech self-sufficiency and innovation creates a foundation for the rally to continue.”

    • Quality bonds: “We would expect quality bonds to rally in the event of fears about the health of the US economy or the durability of the AI rally. With yields still at relatively elevated levels, the risk-return profile for quality bonds is appealing.”

    • Gold: “Gold remains an effective portfolio diversifier and hedge against political and economic risks, and we view this week’s sell-off as a healthy consolidation. While volatility is likely to persist in the near term, lower real interest rates, a weaker US dollar, and concerns over government debt or geopolitical uncertainty should continue to boost demand for bullion.”

    Read more: How to invest in gold in 4 steps

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  • It’s not only Sam Altman anymore warning about an AI bubble. Mark Zuckerberg says a ‘collapse’ is ‘definitely a possibility’ | Fortune

    Deutsche Bank called it “the summer AI turned ugly.” For weeks, with every new bit of evidence that corporations were failing at AI adoption, fears of an AI bubble have intensified, fueled by the realization of just how topheavy the S&P 500 has grown, along with warnings from top industry leaders. An August study from MIT found that 95% of AI pilot programs fail to deliver a return on investment, despite over $40 billion being poured into the space. Just prior to MIT’s report, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman rang AI bubble alarm bells, expressing concern over the overvaluation of some AI startups and the intensity of investor enthusiasm. These trends have even caught the attention of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who noted that the U.S. was witnessing “unusually large amounts of economic activity” in building out AI capabilities. 

    Mark Zuckerberg has some similar thoughts. 

    The Meta CEO acknowledged that the rapid development of and surging investments in AI stands to form a bubble, potentially outpacing practical productivity and returns and risking a market crash. But Zuckerberg insists that the risk of over-investment is preferable to the alternative: being late to what he sees as an era-defining technological transformation.

    “There are compelling arguments for why AI could be an outlier,” Zuckerberg hedged in an appearance on the Access podcast. “And if the models keep on growing in capability year-over-year and demand keeps growing, then maybe there is no collapse.”

    Then Zuckerberg joined the Altman camp, saying that all capital expenditure bubbles like the buildout of AI infrastructure, seen largely in the form of data centers, tend to end in similar ways. “But I do think there’s definitely a possibility, at least empirically, based on past large infrastructure buildouts and how they led to bubbles, that something like that would happen here,” Zuckerberg said.

    Bubble echoes

    Zuckerberg pointed to past bubbles, namely railroads and the dot-com bubble, as key examples of infrastructure buildouts leading to a stock-market collapse. In these instances, he claimed that bubbles occurred due to businesses taking on too much debt, macroeconomic factors, or product demand waning, leading to companies going under and leaving behind valuable assets. 

    The Meta CEO’s comments echoed Altman’s, who has similarly cautioned that the AI boom is showing many signs of a bubble. 

    “When bubbles happen, smart people get overexcited about a kernel of truth,” Altman told The Verge, adding that AI is that kernel: transformative and real, but often surrounded by irrational exuberance. Altman has also warned that “the frenzy of cash chasing anything labeled ‘AI’” can lead to inflated valuations and risk for many. 

    The consequences of these bubbles are costly. During the dot-com bubble, investors poured money into tech startups with unrealistic expectations, driven by hype and a frenzy for new internet-based companies. When the results fell short, the stocks involved in the dot-com bubble lost more than $5 trillion in total market cap.

    An AI bubble stands to have similarly significant economic impacts. In 2025 alone, the largest U.S. tech companies, including Meta, have spent more than $155 billion on AI development. And, according to Statista, the current AI market value is approximately $244.2 billion.

    But, for Zuckerberg, losing out on AI’s potential is a far greater risk than losing money in an AI bubble. The company recently committed at least $600 billion to U.S. data centers and infrastructure through 2028 to support its AI ambitions. According to Meta’s chief financial officer, this money will go towards all of the tech giant’s US data center buildouts and domestic business operations, including new hires. Meta also launched its superintelligence lab, recruiting talent aggressively with multi-million-dollar job offers, to develop AI that outperforms human intelligence.

    “If we end up misspending a couple hundred billion dollars,  that’s going to be very unfortunate obviously. But I would say the risk is higher on the other side,” Zuckerberg said. “If you build too slowly, and superintelligence is possible in three years but you built it out were assuming it would be there in five years, then you’re out of position on what I think is going to be the most important technology that enables the most new products and innovation and value creation in history.”

    While he sees the consequences of not being aggressive enough in AI investing outweighing overinvesting, Zuckerberg acknowledged that Meta’s survival isn’t dependent upon AI’s success.

    For companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, he said “there’s obviously this open question of to what extent are they going to keep on raising money, and that’s dependent both to some degree on their performance and how AI does, but also all of these macroeconomic factors that are out of their control.”

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    Lily Mae Lazarus

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