AI is proving so disruptive that it now threatens the very industries and revenue streams that fund it, with tools capable of cloning major software like Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite raising serious legal and commercial challenges for established tech companies. At the same time, AI is undermining the ad-supported content ecosystem it depends on for training data, while cheaper Chinese models and uncertain returns on investment cast doubt on the sustainability of the sector's enormous capital expenditure. With an estimated $11 trillion in infrastructure costs projected by 2030 and no clear answer on where the money will come from, the AI investment model remains deeply unstable and hard to predict.
