The AI spending boom looks a lot like the dot-com bubble, and that could end badly for investors.

• Big tech companies are pouring money into building AI data centers, much like the fiber-optic buildout that fueled the dot-com crash.
• Back then the biggest players spent about $82 billion a year at the peak; now the top data center firms are set to spend over a trillion dollars next year.
• That is more than ten times the spending of the dot-com era, and a lot of it is being paid for with borrowed money.
• Booms like this usually end in overbuilding, leaving companies stuck with expensive infrastructure they can't fully use.

Outlook: If AI demand doesn't keep up with this debt-fueled spending, a painful correction could hit tech stocks like the dot-com crash did.