What happens if the AI bubble bursts?

Opinion byBethany McLeanNew York Times·29 Sep, 2026 03:00 AM7 mins to readBethany McLean is a financial journalist and the co-author of The Smartest Guys in the Room.A worker installs wiring at Meta’s Eagle Mountain Data Center in Utah. AI-related spending accounts for about half the growth in US gross domestic product, by some estimates. Photo / Christie Hemm Klok, The New York TimesThe AI boom is far larger than the boom in subprime mortgages that set off the 2008 financial crisis. It was about a year ago that Sarah Friar, the chief financial officer of OpenAI, said one way the company might sustain its current financial high-wire act was with a “backstop”