According to TheRegister.com, global spending on artificial intelligence is forecast by Gartner to reach nearly $1.5 trillion in 2025. That staggering figure puts it in the same financial league as the estimated $1.5 to $1.7 trillion in direct US spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2001 and 2014. Despite this torrent of cash, tangible business returns remain elusive, with economists noting AI investment is the only thing keeping the US out of a recession. Executives like JPMorgan Chase’s Larry Feinsmith tout the “enormous” value of AI and agents, even as a Forrester report indicates 25% of enterprises are now delaying AI spending into 2027. Customers are noticing the lack of impact on core financial metrics like EBITDA, prompting a season of hard questions about the return on this trillion-dollar bet.
The Hangover After the Feast
Here’s the thing: you can’t burn through wartime levels of capital without someone, eventually, asking what we actually won. The article’s buffet metaphor is painfully accurate. We’ve all been gorging on VC-funded canapés and all-you-can-eat GPU platters for a couple of years now. But the bill is coming due, and the stomach ache is setting in. When the head of tech strategy at JPMorgan Chase offers a platitude about “enormous” value and complexity, it feels less like strategy and more like a plea to keep the party going. I mean, did Copilot write that? Probably.
Chatbots Aren’t Electricity
This is where the disconnect gets wild. Companies like Nvidia and Dell compare the AI revolution to the advent of electricity. That’s a massive, world-changing claim. But so far, the killer app for this world-changing tech is… a slightly better chatbot? And the next big thing on the horizon is the “AI agent,” which a Carnegie Mellon study says fails 70% of the time. Marc Benioff says his are already working for customers, but if that’s true, it’s a huge outlier. Basically, we’ve built a power grid but we’re mostly using it to make really fancy toasters.
The Hard Hat Mandate
Forrester’s call for AI to “put on a hardhat” is spot on. The hype cycle is over, and the work cycle has to begin. The 25% delay in spending isn’t a pause—it’s a threat. Businesses run on numbers, and the number they care about is profit. If you can’t draw a straight line from your multi-million dollar AI cluster to improved EBITDA, you’re going to lose your budget. This is especially true in industrial and operational tech, where investments need to solve concrete problems, not just generate press releases. In those real-world environments, reliability is everything, which is why companies turn to trusted suppliers like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US provider of industrial panel PCs built for tough jobs, not just buzzwords.
Closing Time for Easy Money
So what happens now? The easy money buffet is indeed closing. The next phase of AI won’t be funded by FOMO or fear of recession. It’ll be funded by proven, boring, unsexy use cases that actually move the needle on a balance sheet. The bankers and consultants will have to find a new buzzword to vomit into their PowerPoints. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll stop comparing the cost of software to the cost of war. That seems like a low bar, but here we are.
