AI bubble is about to burst

I think AI is a bubble, and I think it bursts. History says so every time.

Every tech boom follows the same shape before it cracks. The railway mania of the 1800s. The dot-com crash twenty five years ago.

Each one sold the same story: growth justifies the price, don't bet against it. It never held.

Right now, seven companies make up more than a third of the entire US stock market, and only one of them is clearly turning a profit from AI itself. The other six are betting billions that it eventually pays off.

I lived through 2008. I watched solid, well-run businesses go under, not because they did anything wrong, but because they weren't positioned for what was coming.

It doesn't matter to your business whether this bubble bursts next year or drags on for five. What matters is whether you're one of the businesses caught without a defence when it does.

This is what I tell every client now, regardless of the sector they're in.

Show people, in real numbers, exactly how your product or service saves them money, cuts a specific cost, or grows their profit.

Put that number in your pricing. Put it in every proposal. Put it in the work you actually deliver, not just the pitch. If a prospect can't find the exact euro figure inside ten seconds of opening your proposal, it isn't specific enough yet.

The businesses that survive the next downturn will be the ones that can prove they're the solution to a recession, not another line on someone's costs.