𝗔𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲! 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁'𝘀 𝗻𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗻 𝗩𝗖 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲? 𝗔𝗜 𝗺𝗲𝗲𝘁𝘀 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻.

In many ways, this is reminiscent of the late 1990s when suddenly everything became “internet”.So, what is going and what are the forecasts for 2026?
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𝗜𝘀 𝗔𝗜 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹?
AI is a complete oxymoron (pattern recognition doesn’t bring intelligence; correlation is no causation) but the results are nevertheless just incredible. AI brings all the data of the internet available to all, instantly, in an easily digested fashion. And it appears intelligent (and that’s the dangerous attraction).
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𝗦𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝘄𝗲 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗮𝘁 𝗔𝗜 𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹𝘀?
Applications to coding, legal or healthcare are changing the world. But the real change will take place when all corporates finally master the AI monster. Data control (and therefore legal liability) and security will be cracked this year, unleashing some real productivity gains beyond the odd CoPilot deployments.
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𝗪𝗮𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗿𝗮𝘀𝗵
‍Tobias Bengtsdahl of Antler is right on the money when saying: “I think we’re all playing musical chairs waiting for one negative headline from Nvidia,” NVIDIA shows net result of 52% of revenues in the TTM to Oct 31 – for a hardware (albeit fabless) company! Their stupendous results are creating resentment among their clients and natural competition from workload-specific accelerators (Google’s TPUs for instance).
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𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗿𝗮𝘀𝗵 𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲?
It may well be that that NVIDIA’s market cap goes down from $4.5 trillion to, say, $2.5 trillion (that would be a reduction by nearly half! not the most likely scenario). This would however not fundamentally change NVIDIA’s competitive position: it would simply normalise it – they would still be leaders. But wiping out $2 trillion (approx. 5% of US GDP) would make many investors (incl. retail investors) much poorer and probably freeze the investment market for a while.
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𝗔 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝗼𝗳 𝗮 𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿
It may well be that the market holds up because corporate productivity finally kicks in. But this is a hell of a bet – especially in the context of a geopolitical environment upended by the end of globalisation and the rule-based order, creating major headwinds to the economy and tremendous uncertainty. Brace, brace!