Are we on the brink of the next financial crisis? Last Thursday, there was a “bloodbath in tech stocks,” as the stock market lost $3.2 trillion in a single day. The media is blaming the “blue wave,” but anxiety about the AI boom was already rising before the election. The week prior, on October 29, the “Magnificent Seven”—the tech companies that have driven much of the stock market’s recent growth—lost nearly a trillion dollars in value. The immediate catalyst for that sell-off was the realization that Google, Amazon, and Meta have all become “cash incinerators,” as their latest earnings reports showed astronomical spending on AI and a growing reliance on borrowing. The question that skeptics have long raised about the data center buildout has suddenly reached a fever pitch: will there actually be enough demand for AI for the companies to cover these massive investments and pay back their loans?