There’s a bubble in talk of an “AI bubble.”
According to an AlphaSense research, the term “AI bubble” surfaced in 42 earnings calls and investor conference transcripts between October and December, a 740% rise from the prior quarter.
The word was cited in five transcripts during the third quarter of 2025. Four in the quarter prior. Executives and analysts used the term in a total of 24 transcripts throughout 2024. It was 9 in 2023. (Transcripts where “AI” and “bubble” were within five words of one another were counted in the study.)
The question, “Is the AI boom a bubble?” is currently being asked by dozens of businesses in the semiconductor, cloud infrastructure, financial services, and industrial sectors.
AMD CEO Lisa Su said to investors at UBS’s Global Technology and AI Conference on December 2, “from the aspect of, you know, do we see a bubble? There isn’t a bubble visible.”
In a similar vein, Colette Kress, CFO of Nvidia, dismissed the idea on stage, calling it a “supposed AI bubble.”
During Nvidia’s November earnings call, her boss, CEO Jensen Huang, stated as much. “There’s been a lot of talk about an AI bubble,” he stated. “From our vantage point, we see something very different.”
During its November earnings call, Aixtron, a German manufacturer of semiconductor equipment, was asked if clients would reduce capacity plans if interest in AI wanes. The Paris-based credit insurer Coface talked about recalculating large AI-related capital requirements to make sure they remain viable even if “bubble-type enthusiasm” wanes.
What caused the abrupt increase, then?
The enormity of the figures being thrown around was highlighted by analysts.
Sarah Hoffman, head of AI thought leadership at AlphaSense, told, “We’ve been seeing these huge partnerships and people throwing out money amounts for infrastructure – like trillions of dollars – which I can’t remember ever hearing before.” She stated that the disparity between the trillions being invested and the billions of dollars earned from several AI initiatives “is what’s getting people a little bit freaked out.”
Analysts and CEOs are expressing concerns they are already hearing from investors, according to Gil Luria, managing director and head of technology research at DA Davidson.
Luria identified “circular transactions” as a source of worry. Nvidia invests one dollar in CoreWeave, which borrows nine and spends eight of them on Nvidia processors, he added. “Those are the echoes of bubbles past.
Bubble proponents have had plenty of ammunition over the last eight weeks.
Tech giants such as Sam Altman and Bill Gates have stated that there is some froth in AI expenditure. In earnings calls this quarter, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon all stated that they intend to expand investment on data centers, which are the foundation of AI. Michael Burry, whose bet against the housing market was immortalized in “The Big Short,” made waves when he revealed that he had shorted Nvidia, the world’s most valuable corporation.
Executives have spoken to doubters, but according to Luria, money is the only thing that will stop the discussion.
According to him, there is nothing they can say to alter people’s opinions on whether or not there is a bubble. They are limited to displaying outcomes, and those results must be financial.
