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Boom or bubble: How long can the AI investment craze last?

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Boom or bubble: How long can the AI investment craze last?


OpenAI, led by CEO Sam Altman, sits at the center of an AI investment bonanza.

The staggering investments in artificial intelligence keep coming: Last week, AI chip giant Nvidia announced it would invest $100 billion to help OpenAI, the frontrunner in generative AI, build data centers.

How are these enormous sums possible when the returns on investments, at least for now, pale in comparison?

Huge investments

AI-related spending is soaring worldwide, expected to reach approximately $1.5 trillion by 2025, according to US research firm Gartner, and over $2 trillion in 2026—nearly 2% of global GDP.

Even though tangible returns fall short of the investments going in, the AI revolution appears unstoppable.

“There’s no doubt among investors that AI is the major breakthrough technology”—on par with harnessing electricity, said Denis Barrier, head of investment fund Cathay Innovation.

Silicon Valley’s mindset “is more about seizing the opportunity” than worrying about any risks, he said.

Geopolitical tensions are helping drive the frenzy, primarily to build massive housing tens of thousands of expensive chips that require phenomenal electrical power and large-scale, energy-hungry cooling.

From 2013 to 2024, private AI investment reached $470 billion in the United States—nearly a quarter in the last year alone—followed by superpower rival China’s $119 billion, according to a Stanford University report.

Just a handful of giants are on the receiving end, with OpenAI first in line.

In March 2025, ChatGPT’s parent company raised approximately $40 billion, bringing its estimated valuation to around $300 billion, according to analysts.

‘Circular funding’

OpenAI is now the world’s most valuable company, surpassing SpaceX, worth $500 billion in a deal for employees to sell a limited number of shares.

The company led by CEO Sam Altman sits at the center of an AI investment bonanza: It oversees the Stargate project, which has secured $400 billion of the $500 billion planned by 2029 for Texas data centers spanning an area the size of Manhattan.

The White House-backed consortium includes Softbank, Oracle, Microsoft and Nvidia.

Nvidia, which completed over 50 venture capital deals in 2024 according to PitchBook data, is often chided for practicing “circular funding”—investing in startups that use the funds to buy its chips.

Some analysts criticize this as bubble-fueling behavior.

The OpenAI deal “will likely fuel those concerns,” said Stacy Rasgon, a Bernstein Research analyst.

In the first six months of 2025, OpenAI pulled in around $4.3 billion in revenue, specialist outlet The Information reported this week.

Therefore, unlike Meta or Google with substantial cash reserves, OpenAI and competitors like Anthropic or Mistral must be creative in their search for funds to bridge the gap.

For AI believers, an explosion in revenue is only a matter of time for a company whose ChatGPT assistant serves 700 million people—reaching nearly 9% of humanity less than three years after launch.

‘Up in smoke’

Nothing is certain, however.

Feeding AI’s computing appetite will cost up to $500 billion annually in global data center investments through 2030, requiring $2 trillion in annual revenues to make the expenses viable, according to consulting firm Bain & Company.

Even under optimistic assumptions, Bain estimates the AI industry faces an $800 billion deficit.

OpenAI itself plans to spend over $100 billion by 2029—meaning turning a profit is still a ways off.

On the energy front, AI’s global computing footprint could reach 200 gigawatts by 2030—the annual equivalent of Brazil’s electric consumption—half of that in the United States.

Despite the daunting figures, many analysts remain optimistic.

“Even with concerns about a possible ‘AI bubble’… we estimate the sector is in its 1996” moment during the , “absolutely not its 1999” before that , said Dan Ives, a Wedbush Securities analyst.

Long-term, “many dollars will go up in smoke, and there will be many losers, like during the internet bubble, but the internet remained,” said the Silicon Valley investor.

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LG’s High-End Soundbar System Makes My Living Room Feel Like a Home Theater

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LG’s High-End Soundbar System Makes My Living Room Feel Like a Home Theater


Setup was relatively quick and painless. You just have to unbox four speakers, a soundbar, and a subwoofer, attach their power cables, and plug in everything. Pairing happens through the LG ThinQ app, which allows you to set up the Sound Suite system and tune it to exactly where you’re sitting in the room using your cell phone’s microphone.

You can also set up each speaker to play music and group it with any other LG smart speakers you might have around your home, like the more affordable $250 M5 bookshelf speaker, to create a whole-home system.

Once all the components were synced, I plugged the soundbar into the C5 OLED via HDMI, and was able to easily control everything via the TV remote’s volume and mute buttons. More in-depth settings had to happen in the app, but if you’re anything like me, this won’t become a regular chore. You’ll set it how you like it once and move on. While the pairing functionality with the LG TV was nice, it’s not required–the eARC port lets the Sound Suite work perfectly with any modern TV.

The bar itself runs the show, with a black-and-white display on the far left that shows your mode and volume, among other settings. In the center of the bar and below each speaker, an LED light strip that also shows you the volume when you change it, which is a nice touch.

Getting Musical

Photograph: Parker Hall

The sound of the LG Sound Suite is full and cinematic, thanks in no small part to the extra dedicated speakers. Most competitors lack front left and right, simply opting to use the soundbar for these channels. As such, the width and breadth of the soundstage were bigger than most competitors I’ve tried, with only Samsung’s flagship HW-Q990F as a real contender. Even the Samsung lacked the lower-frequency audio quality that these LG speakers provide.



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‘The Last Airbender’ Leaked Online. Some Fans Say Paramount Deserves the Fallout

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‘The Last Airbender’ Leaked Online. Some Fans Say Paramount Deserves the Fallout


The online leak of a full version of Avatar: Aang, The Last Airbender—a highly anticipated animated film in a multimedia fantasy franchise—has divided passionate fans while upsetting those who spent years working on the film.

The leaks began on X late on Saturday night, about six months before Aang was scheduled to premiere on Paramount+. User @ImStillDissin posted two short clips from the film. “Nickelodeon accidentally emailed me the entire Avatar aang movie,” he claimed. He also threatened to stream the entire movie if Paramount didn’t release an official trailer, and he posted a still from the movie’s end credits, revealing previously undisclosed voice-over cast and roles. The media from @ImStillDissin’s posts were later hit with copyright strikes and removed.

But within 48 hours, links to download the full movie appeared on 4chan and X, where some users also directly streamed the film. Across the web, fans said they had successfully pirated and watched what appeared to be a nearly finished and “beautiful” animated film.

While some argued that Paramount deserved to be punished because of certain creative and marketing decisions around the movie, others noted what a blow the leak was to the animators and production crew. A number of those team members took to social media to convey their sadness and frustration.

“We worked on the aang movie for years with the expectation that’d [sic] we’d get to celebrate all of our hard work in theaters. Just to see people unceremoniously leak the film and pass our shots around on twitter like candy,” animator Julia Schoel wrote Tuesday on X.

The user behind @ImStillDissin, who would not reveal his real name due to fear of legal repercussions, tells WIRED that he obtained the movie almost by chance and did not expect his posts to set off such a crisis in the entertainment world. “When I posted those clips I was purely trolling,” he says. “I was expecting a day of clout farming at best, not for the whole thing to blow up like this.”

(While WIRED has done its due diligence in verifying that the person speaking to us was behind the @ImStillDissin X account, we acknowledge that the hacking community is known to troll.)

According to @ImStillDissin, a screen-grabbed version of Avatar: Aang, The Last Airbender was circulating among people he knew from his days in the hacking community, one of whom shared it with him. “Broadly speaking, the supply chain for movies and TV is rife with insecure companies and vendors and lax checks,” he claims. He notes that two different SpongeBob SquarePants movies leaked months before their release dates in 2024. “Someone on 4chan who wasn’t happy at me drip-feeding stuff posted a copy of a draft script [of the new Avatar film] from like two years back,” says @ImStillDissin.

Neither Nickelodeon nor its parent company Paramount have confirmed a hack had taken place, nor have they issued a statement on the matter. They also did not respond to requests for comment.

Originally announced in 2021, Avatar: Aang, The Last Airbender marked the first production for Avatar Studios, a division of Nickelodeon’s animation department.

Some people felt justified in pirating and sharing the movie due to the recasting of voice actors. Last year, during a Reddit AMA, casting director Jenny Jue wrote that the voice cast from the Avatar TV show that aired on Nickelodeon in the 2000s was not returning due to efforts to “match actors’ ethnic/racial background to the characters they’re portraying.”



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NASA Wants to Put Nuclear Reactors on the Moon

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NASA Wants to Put Nuclear Reactors on the Moon


Having demonstrated that it has the operational capability to transport humans safely to the moon and back, the United States is moving on to its next major aim: It wants nuclear reactors in orbit and on the lunar surface by 2030. For such a feat, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will have to work in conjunction with the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy.

In a post on X, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) unveiled a document with new guidelines for federal agencies to establish the space nuclear technology road map for the coming years. This, they say, will ensure “US space superiority.”

At present, space instruments use solar power to operate. However, this is considered impractical for more complex purposes. Although technically there is always sunlight, the power is intermittent and almost always requires bulky batteries to store it.

Reactors produce fairly continuous energy for years through nuclear fission. They can also be used for so-called nuclear electric propulsion. Continuous output makes them the most viable option for lunar base subsistence, but they can also allow spacecraft to undertake long or complex missions without worrying about depleting a limited supply of chemical fuel.

Nuclear technology, in short, makes it possible to go farther, with more payload, for longer, and with fewer constraints.

According to the memorandum, the US goal is to put a medium-power reactor in orbit by 2028, with a variant designed for nuclear electric propulsion, and a first functional large reactor on the surface of the moon by 2030. To achieve this, both NASA and the Pentagon will develop energy technologies in parallel, using the current strategy of competition among contractors.

The reactors will have to be modular and scalable, and will have to include applications for both future life on the moon and space propulsion. For its part, the DOE will have to ensure that these projects have the fuel, infrastructure, and safety features necessary to achieve their objectives. In addition, the agency will evaluate whether the industry has the capacity to produce up to four reactors in five years.

The plan contemplates technologies that produce at least 20 kilowatts of electricity (kWe) for three years in orbit and at least five years on the lunar surface. In the meantime, they should have a design capable of raising power to 100 kWe. The first designs should arrive within a year.

Finally, the order tasks the OSTP with creating a road map for the initiative, noting obstacles and recommendations for addressing them.

“Nuclear power in space will give us the sustained electricity, heating, and propulsion essential to a permanent presence on the moon, Mars, and beyond,” OSTP posted. For his part, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman posted, “The time has come for America to get underway on nuclear power in space.” The message was followed by an emoji of a US flag.

The plan provides a common framework for each agency to work within. In the background, the race for space infrastructure is evidence of technological competition with China, which is also seeking advanced energy capabilities for the moon.

This story originally appeared in WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.



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