Big tech is borrowing heavily to build AI infrastructure that isn't paying for itself yet — bad news for investors in AI-linked stocks, and a warning sign for anyone with retirement money in the market.

• Big tech will spend over $700 billion on AI in 2026, while the whole global AI services market brings in a tiny fraction of that.
• The money is coming from debt, not profits — Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Oracle issued about $121 billion in new bonds last year, and free cash flow is collapsing.
• Most corporate AI projects die before launch, and around six in ten companies using AI can't point to any money it made them.
• A Canadian court ruled a company is on the hook for whatever its chatbot says, and insurers are now writing AI damage out of their policies — so companies carry the risk alone.
• Chip prices are falling fast, cheap Chinese models are catching up, and half of the US data centers planned for 2026 are already delayed or cancelled.

Outlook: The comparison being drawn is the dot-com fiber glut — real hardware, revenue that never arrives — and insiders selling billions of their own stock suggests the people closest to it are already taking money off the table.