Major hyperscaler capital expenditures exceeding $1 trillion in 2025–2026, funded increasingly through debt and off-balance-sheet vehicles, remain the central driver behind market-implied odds for an AI industry downturn. Warnings from the Bank for International Settlements in June highlighted risks of disappointing returns triggering an investment pullback, echoing historical manias, while Chinese hedge funds flagged revenue pressure at firms like Anthropic and cheaper domestic large language models gaining adoption. Stock volatility in semiconductors, rising memory costs prompting price hikes, and supply constraints such as electricity and chip bottlenecks have reinforced caution. Yet continued earnings support from leading AI companies, contract backlogs, and a “rolling bubbles” dynamic across the value chain have kept trader consensus favoring no settlement-level contraction by year-end. Key upcoming catalysts include fourth-quarter earnings, potential regulatory actions on data centers, and any shifts in Federal Reserve policy.