GREENVISSAGE EXPLAINS: IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE THE NEW DOTCOM BUBBLE?
The rapid ascent of artificial intelligence in 2025 has drawn striking comparisons to the exuberant dot-com bubble that defined the late 1990s. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, recently commented on how AI-driven systems are pervasive across digital media, noting with both irony and insight that there are really a lot of LLM-run Twitter accounts now. His words crystallise a new reality where AI is omnipresent online, challenging the borders of authenticity and turning curiosity into speculation. The industry’s explosive growth is impossible to ignore. Altman signalled in mid-2025 that intelligence is becoming too cheap to meter, framing the shift not just as a technological leap but a transformation of value itself. AI’s impact on global markets is dramatic: the worldwide AI sector ballooned to more than USD 638 billion in 2024 and is forecast to top USD 3.6 trillion by 2034, with explosive annual growth rates pushing above 19%. In just Q1 2025, OpenAI alone raised USD 40 billion in funding, an unprecedented feat in technology’s history, six times what it raised the previous quarter.
Much like dot-com startups two decades ago, AI companies attract enormous investment based on their transformative potential. Startups focused on generative AI – building language, image, and data models – are raising billions with business models that are, in many cases, still unproven. The funding landscape is reminiscent of the mania for web servers and e-commerce portals during the dot-com era, a blend of visionary hope and FOMO, with giants like Microsoft, Google, and a new class of chipmakers building out infrastructure at unprecedented speed. Global chip revenue for AI is expected to surpass USD 80 billion by 2027, quadruple 2021’s numbers and be a testament to the sector’s foundational role in modern computing. Yet the comparison only goes so far. What separates AI from the dot-com bubble is its immediate, tangible impact. In healthcare alone, the AI market is predicted to surge from USD 20 billion in 2023 to nearly USD 187 billion by 2030, revolutionising diagnostics, drug discovery, and patient care. Nearly 38% of medical providers now use computers for diagnostics, Netflix’s AI recommendations generate over USD 1 billion annually, and 83% of surveyed companies rank AI as a top priority in their business plans.
Across regions, North America leads the way, with a 2025 market value of over USD 51 billion, followed by Asia-Pacific and Europe. This adoption is powered by aggressive government policy, a vibrant startup ecosystem, and heavyweight legacy tech firms such as Apple, IBM, and Amazon. Some 97 million people are expected to work in the AI space by the end of 2025, underlining both the sector’s economic weight and its central role in reshaping the global workforce. Despite the optimism, pitfalls remain. Analysts warn that 95% of enterprise AI projects fail to achieve meaningful productivity gains, and countless startups are likely to vanish before delivering on bold promises. Altman’s own words acknowledge the inevitable shakeout; for every winner, someone is poised to lose a phenomenal amount of money. The bubble-like conditions, relentless hype, overheated valuations, and frantic corporate adoption mirror the frenzy of 2000.
For those looking back at the dot-com bubble, the lessons are clear. Many high-profile failures ultimately seeded the infrastructure and business models of today’s digital economy. AI could follow a similar trajectory, absorbing its own excesses and leaving behind a sustainable foundation, assuming the underlying technology continues to deliver real value in areas from smart manufacturing to generative content and personalised medicine. As Altman and others push the boundaries, the true test of whether AI is the new dot-com lies in what survives the inevitable shakeout. Will generative models and autonomous agents become true engines of productivity and social change, or will the current mania cool, revealing a more sober landscape of incremental progress? The AI boom stands poised on the knife-edge between speculation and revolution, and what follows will determine not just the fate of this industry but the evolution of technology itself.