The article's "reverse terraforming the Earth" quote is the real story here. This is what makes the dot-com analogy imperfect.
The dot-com bubble required relatively little CapEx. This AI bubble is a physical infrastructure bubble (data centers, power, $5T in chips).
It feels far more analogous to the fiber-optic bubble of the late 90s. Trillions were spent laying "dark fiber" across the globe. The companies that laid it all went bust, but that exact infrastructure was what enabled the next generation (Google, Facebook, etc.) to be built for almost free a few years later.
We are in the "building the dark fiber for AI" stage. The immediate ROI isn't there, but the infrastructure is the prerequisite.
The dot-com bubble required relatively little CapEx. This AI bubble is a physical infrastructure bubble (data centers, power, $5T in chips).
It feels far more analogous to the fiber-optic bubble of the late 90s. Trillions were spent laying "dark fiber" across the globe. The companies that laid it all went bust, but that exact infrastructure was what enabled the next generation (Google, Facebook, etc.) to be built for almost free a few years later.
We are in the "building the dark fiber for AI" stage. The immediate ROI isn't there, but the infrastructure is the prerequisite.