| Brooke Selassie, one of the leading AI experts at technology & business consultant Gartner Inc., says that companies aren’t shying away from further AI investment despite being disappointed by poor results from a ‘set-it-and-leave-it’ approach to AI spend. Instead, multinationals are adapting their spending to focus on more productive investments while defunding other digital projects to channel more funds into AI. Gartner sees AI spending reaching nearly $1.5 trillion in 2025 and growing t0 $2 trillion next year. If the global economy stays on track, it could rise to $3.3 trillion by 2029, at an average annual growth rate of 27.5%. Of nearly 250 multinationals polled by Gartner, 83% percent said they expected to spend more in 2026 on AI than 2025, while even more, 89%, said they planned to spend more on generative AI. That’s 34% growth for AI overall and 39% for Gen AI — it’s absolutely enormous. No wonder the AI hardware-related stocks are starting to outpace gains of the biggest players. Selassie told me that a lot of the C-Suite executives he speaks to are making multi-year plans for stepped-up AI spend because of fear of being left behind and a recognition of more productive ways to deploy AI within their companies. He expects the momentum in increased spending will last at least another four quarters. How far will the AI ‘bubble’ carry the market? | If Selassie is right, we have at least another four quarters of hyper-growth to carry the equity market higher. But instead of a handful of AI hyperscalers, a more broad-based rally could lead the next leg up. Not everyone can afford Nvidia’s chips, or the most expensive infrastructure. Spending will trickle down to new and smaller entrants, and spread to more industries and non-tech sectors -- from electrical and industrial equipment players, to power infrastructure and new forms of financial services, among others. What is the downside to all this? Obviously, one of the main reasons companies invest in AI is to create efficiencies -- do more with less. When I asked Selassie what it means for employment, he said the surface area for new job creation is greater than for job destruction. Gartner expects “half a billion net-new human jobs” by 2036. By his telling, agentic AI deployments would allow companies to perform repetitive tasks ‘within boundaries’ of existing workload more accurately, timely and predictably, freeing workers up for higher level tasks, creating innovation and increasing productivity. I’ll admit I’m a bit skeptical. Pure financial sense says that if companies are spending more on AI, they will cut spending somewhere else. Everyone agrees AI will mean job displacement. Until new jobs get created, that’s a downside element yet to come. If enough people get displaced, the loss of spending power might be what leads to the AI investment cycle’s demise — and ultimately be a reality check for the market itself. | 
