Can enterprise AI pay for the boom?

The artificial intelligence buildout is making an enormous bet on what businesses will eventually be willing to pay for intelligence. In our research this summer on forecasting the AI bubble, we argued that a key indicator to watch is productive utilization by enterprise customers. Specifically, we said at the time, if infrastructure supply catches up before productive monetization materializes, the risk of a bubble popping increases to what we felt were dangerous levels. We forecast that the supply constraints and healthy capital funding appetites at that time could provide conditions for a soft landing. And we pegged 2029 as the highest-risk year. And that brings us to the next obvious question: What has to happen inside mainstream enterprises for their AI investments to become economically self-funding? Michael Burry’s analysis of Anthropic PBC highlights the scale and interconnectedness of the commitments that Anthropic is making. Apollo’s research by Torsten Slok raises questions about how broadly the financial benefits are showing up today. And the history of the personal computer and internet eras reminds us that productivity gains aren’t always immediate, and that powerful technologies can coexist with what initially seem to be poor investment returns that take time to appear. We…