No the economy doesn’t tumble. All of the major public tech companies have real businesses that were profitable before AI and will be profitable after AI. All except Amazon are spending money out of their own revenues.
Businesses aren’t going to stop growing because of AI, the only public company really dependent on AI are NVidia and Oracle. Oracle because it is borrowing money to support build out for OpenAI.
Apple was borrowing like crazy before AI. How much money do you think Apple is spending on AI aside from the $1 billion they are paying for Gemini? That’s less than 1% of their profit and hell that’s less than 5% of what Google pays them.
Well, the Great Fiscal Crisis did not result in mass starvation, so in some sense, it "wasn't all that dramatic". But, it was a big deal in comparison to a normal downturn. So, it depends on what you mean.
Medium term, I think it would release a lot of resources (skilled workers, productive capacity, energy) to use on something more productive. But then, I kind of hoped for that after the GFC, also...
The distinction nobody makes is between the AI infrastructure bubble and AI utility. The infrastructure spending is clearly overheated - the capex numbers are insane relative to actual revenue. But the underlying technology genuinely works for specific use cases. I use LLMs daily in production pipelines and they save me hours of work that would otherwise require hiring. The bubble popping would mean GPU prices crater, API costs drop further, and the actual useful applications become cheaper to run. That's not a catastrophe for builders - it's a gift. The people who get hurt are investors in pure-play AI companies with no real moat and NVIDIA's stock price.
No the economy doesn’t tumble. All of the major public tech companies have real businesses that were profitable before AI and will be profitable after AI. All except Amazon are spending money out of their own revenues.
Businesses aren’t going to stop growing because of AI, the only public company really dependent on AI are NVidia and Oracle. Oracle because it is borrowing money to support build out for OpenAI.
lol @ “all except amazon are spending their own revenues…”
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/02/12/alphabet-100-year-bond-d...
Apple also borrowed money - pre AI when it had plenty of cash, have you checked Google’s last year earnings and cash on hand?
> all except Amazon are spending money out of their own revenues.
so apple and google and amazon and…? :)
earnings and cash on hand are not relevant, they are all borrowing like crazy to fund the ai
Apple was borrowing like crazy before AI. How much money do you think Apple is spending on AI aside from the $1 billion they are paying for Gemini? That’s less than 1% of their profit and hell that’s less than 5% of what Google pays them.
Well, the Great Fiscal Crisis did not result in mass starvation, so in some sense, it "wasn't all that dramatic". But, it was a big deal in comparison to a normal downturn. So, it depends on what you mean.
Medium term, I think it would release a lot of resources (skilled workers, productive capacity, energy) to use on something more productive. But then, I kind of hoped for that after the GFC, also...
The distinction nobody makes is between the AI infrastructure bubble and AI utility. The infrastructure spending is clearly overheated - the capex numbers are insane relative to actual revenue. But the underlying technology genuinely works for specific use cases. I use LLMs daily in production pipelines and they save me hours of work that would otherwise require hiring. The bubble popping would mean GPU prices crater, API costs drop further, and the actual useful applications become cheaper to run. That's not a catastrophe for builders - it's a gift. The people who get hurt are investors in pure-play AI companies with no real moat and NVIDIA's stock price.