While the majority of AI leaders seem to agree that we need to take the foot off the AI development pedal or else risk disaster, Wall Street isn’t exactly enthralled by the idea.
For years now, analysts have warned that the United States economy is massively overindexed on AI and resting on a staggering amount of debt, with enormous data center projects and eye-bulging capital expenditures fueling fears over a growing bubble.
And now that most major frontier AI labs are looking to slow things down, investors are ringing the alarm over a “wobbly house of cards,” as Bloomberg reports.
If this house of cards were to collapse, they warn, the consequences could be devastating. While it’s an already-familiar refrain at this point, it simply — and perhaps fortunately — hasn’t been tested just yet. But the longer we wait, the more dire the outcome, as the stakes continue to grow at an alarming pace.
“People may not fully grasp just how wound up the market and the economy is in all of this,” Callodine Capital Management CEO Jim Morrow told Bloomberg. “There are just so many things to unravel if it starts.”
According to the latest estimates, AI-related spending is currently accounting for roughly half of the United States’ GDP growth. Without it, the country could spiral into a financial crisis on the scale of the dot-com crash.
Meanwhile, tech leaders, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, his counterpart at OpenAI, Sam Altman, and even Elon Musk, argue that we need to slow down AI development in light of what they perceive to be an existential threat.
But whether that’s even an option remains debatable, per Bloomberg. For one, the world’s other biggest AI economy, China, is laughing at at the very idea, dismissing the remarks as “fear-mongering.”
“If we see AI development slow, that means capex is likely to slow,” Ameriprise chief market strategist Anthony Saglimbene told the magazine. “Any slowdown would reset the profit expectations for the entire ecosystem. Given how concentrated the market is to AI, that would be a severe headwind.”
Rising interest rates could raise the stakes even further, making it even more expensive for companies to borrow money to cover their enormous projected expenditures.
Then there’s the simple fact that nobody knows if any of this spending will pay off in the long run. A return on investment is little more than a distant and tentative dream in 2026 — and open source AI systems are now constantly nipping at the heels of frontier models, making a profitable business model feel hazier than ever.
If the house of cards were to collapse, some companies would probably survive while countless others fold.
“Will there be winners? Absolutely,” Boston Partners director of global market research Michael Mullaney told Bloomberg. “It’s hard to say who is going to wind up on the other side of this thing and coining money to justify all their expenses.”
“There will be, but it’s not going to be a boatload of companies, it’s going to be a handful of companies,” he added.
More on the AI bubble: Economists Concerned the AI Bubble Is About to Blow
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