AI Boom Faces Dot-Com Crash Risk as IPOs Near

Charles Gasparino’s New York Post column warns that the artificial intelligence market could trace the dot-com bubble’s path, leaving investors exposed to heavy losses. Published Oct. 17, 2026, the column compares today’s AI enthusiasm with the internet boom, when companies that weren’t making money were promoted as investments able to defy common sense and gravity.

The dot-com precedent

Gasparino recalls that on Jan. 1, 2000, the feared Y2K crisis proved harmless, while a threat loomed in the stock market. In March 2000, he writes, the historic stock run-up showed itself to be one of history’s great investment bubbles. He calls the period’s investment language a “new paradigm,” a phrase that captured irrational exuberance, with emotion, not company metrics, driving valuations.

At the center of the frenzy, many companies had what Gasparino calls “outright insane” business models. Most others were simply overvalued. A few showed genuine promise but still had to survive the correction. The losses were staggering. A generation of investors got burned, and the technology market took years to recover, according to the column.

The crash swept up more than speculative companies. Gasparino says names such as Pets.com, presented at the time as a possible next Microsoft, fell alongside Microsoft and nearly any public company tied to the internet business. Small investors lost everything, he writes. Many now weighing AI investments don’t remember the dot-com era, or never learned about it.

Signals in the AI market

Gasparino says the AI boom’s sales pitch echoes the internet era: groundbreaking technology paired with a promise that all investors could get rich. AI may eventually deliver that result, he writes, but the path could be far off and messy. The column doesn’t name a definite trigger for an AI valuation reversal.

Instead, he points to hedge funds and institutions that do their own research rather than rely on financial television promoters. Those investors, Gasparino says, sense something isn’t right with AI, the data and Wall Street’s sales machine. They’ve begun taking profits.

Rates rose after a bad inflation report, followed by a selloff in AI stocks. Gasparino says he can’t tell whether those moves mark the market’s final statement on AI. More enthusiasm could still arrive.

IPOs and borrowing costs

Initial public offerings by hyperscalers such as Anthropic and possibly OpenAI could come in the coming weeks and months, Gasparino writes. Those potential offerings sit alongside his warning that the AI market may draw renewed investor interest before a correction.

Gasparino argues that interest rates will rise because AI competes with the federal government’s substantial borrowing needs. He predicts a correction for AI companies and for companies adopting the technology through heavy spending, much of it funded by debt. His advice: take profits and avoid greed, or hope the AI company you back survives a crash.