As 2026 opens, talk about a US AI bubble has grown louder than ever. Promises of a radical breakthrough in post-human intelligence and fantastic productivity gains have captured the animal spirit of investors to the point where, as one financial commentator summarizes, « America is now one big bet on AI. The stock market valuation of AI-related firms has increased tenfold over the past decade, while fixed investment in the sector as a whole is so massive that it is the primary driver of US growth in 2025. The AI rush requires a massive physical buildout of data centers, computing equipment, cooling systems, network hardware, grid connections, and power infrastructure. The calculation and storage capabilities to train and, above all, to operate AI models are embodied in this complex and costly machinery. This talk proposes examining the surge in the financial value of AI-related stocks and capital expenditures in AI-related assets through the lens of the crisis theory of overaccumulation and discusses the specificities of this AI rush in the light of the debate surrounding intellectual monopoly and the technofeudal trend in too-late capitalism. After documenting the extent of the AI Bubble, I’ll propose that speculation is a side- effect of the rationale for investment in that sector in light of what David Harvey dubbed “the capitalists' necessary passion for surplus-value-producing technological change ». I’ll then identify the vulnerabilities arising from the surplus of capital invested in AI relative to valorization opportunities, considering the uneven build-up of the AI value chain, uncertainties around anticipated demand for AI products, the life cycles of AI-computing capabilities, ecological resource shortages, and the grave danger of generalized labor demoralization. However, acknowledging this dynamic of overaccumulation is not enough. The deployment of AI capabilities should also be analyzed in the context of an ageing capitalism, where the historical tendency towards socialization results in the encoding of what Pasquinelli called “the forms of social cooperation and collective intelligence”, touching on the fundamentals of the mode of production and raising new political stakes.
Cédric Durand is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Geneva. His research focuses on the transformation of contemporary capitalism. He is the author of Fictitious Capital. How Finance is Appropriating our Future (2017), Techno-feudalism. Critique of the Digital Economy (2024) and How to Change Course. The Principles of Ecological Planning (with Razmig Keucheyan, 2027). He contributes regularly to the New Left Review and engages regularly in public debates.
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