AI Boom Could Echo Dot-Com Wipeout, Columnist Warns

Charles Gasparino’s New York Post column, published Oct. 17, 2026, warns that the artificial intelligence market could follow the dot-com bubble and leave ordinary people with the losses. He doesn’t mince words about how the last boom ended. In his telling, those least equipped to absorb the damage stand to lose the most.

He begins with history. On Jan. 1, 2000, the feared Y2K crisis came and went without incident. But the real danger, Gasparino writes, was already taking shape in the stock market. By March of that year, the historic run-up had revealed itself as one of history’s great investment bubbles. Many companies at the frenzy’s center had what he calls “outright insane” business models. Most others were simply overvalued. A few showed real promise, but still had to survive the correction.

Who Paid the Price

The losses were staggering. Gasparino says promoters weren’t the ones who absorbed them. A generation of investors took a beating, and the technology market needed years to recover. He recalls Pets.com, presented as a possible next Microsoft, and says the crash swept up Microsoft too, along with nearly any public company tied to the internet business. Small investors lost everything. That’s the part he wants readers to remember.

He worries that many investors today either don’t remember the dot-com era or aren’t weighing it as they consider AI investments. Memory is short. The people hurt last time often had the least cushion to recover.

The Sales Pitch, Then and Now

Gasparino describes the AI boom’s pitch in familiar terms: groundbreaking technology, alongside claims that everyday investors could get rich. He writes that the technology may deliver that result someday, though the path could be far off and messy. Retail savers tend to get caught in the gap between a promise and its timing.

He also points to another kind of signal. Hedge funds and institutions that conduct their own research, instead of relying on financial television promoters, are the likeliest source of current concern, he argues. Those investors sense, he writes, that something isn’t right with AI, the data and Wall Street’s sales machine, and they’ve begun taking profits. When professionals start heading for the exits, latecomers usually hold the positions left behind.

Rates, Borrowing and the Coming Test

Gasparino points to recent market moves: rates rose after a bad inflation report, then AI stocks sold off. He says he can’t tell whether those moves mark the market’s final word on AI. More enthusiasm could still arrive, with initial public offerings by hyperscalers such as Anthropic and possibly OpenAI coming in the weeks and months ahead.

He argues that interest rates will rise because AI competes with the federal government’s substantial borrowing needs. He predicts a correction for AI and for companies adopting its technology through heavy spending, much of it funded by debt. Debt-funded bets can spread damage well beyond the people who made them, reaching pensions, retirement accounts and the broader economy that depends on stable credit. Public oversight of market pricing and access deserves more attention than the current hype allows.

His advice is blunt: take profits. Don’t let greed or hope that the company you back survives a crash guide your decisions.

Why This Matters: The dot-com collapse left a generation of investors with lasting losses; small savers, told the boom was different, took the hardest hit. Gasparino’s column arrives as public and private capital flows into artificial intelligence reach extraordinary size, and several major AI firms may soon offer shares to the public. Whether that moment brings broad participation or another round of concentrated gains and widespread losses depends on rules, disclosure and whether regulators look past the sales pitch. Gasparino’s warning is that market exuberance has real victims, and accountability should be built in before the next correction arrives, not after.