LONDON – Investors should be asking not whether the AI boom will end, but what will happen to markets when it does and where safety may be found.

I have previously argued that the business models of OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI darlings look increasingly unsustainable and that hyperscalers such as Meta and Amazon face daunting maths to make their data centre investments pay off. Yet, for now, the investment surge continues to accelerate.

Annual investment in technology equipment and software reached US$1.5 trillion (S$1.94 trillion) in 2025, about 70 per cent more than during the inflation-adjusted peak of the late-1990s technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) bubble, better known as the dot.com boom.

While I do not expect the…