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For much of the AI boom, there have been whispers about Nvidia’s frenzied dealmaking. The chipmaker bolstered the market by pumping money into dozens of AI startups, many of which rely on Nvidia’s graphics processing units to develop and run their models. OpenAI, to a lesser degree, also invested in startups, some of which built services on top of its AI models. But as tech firms have entered a more costly phase of AI development, the scale of the deals involving these two companies has grown substantially, making it harder to ignore.

Current growth is also “not coming from AI itself but from building the factories to generate AI capacity,” he added, suggesting that the tech industry is selling a still-hypothetical future rather than delivering a real one.

It’s true that investment in AI has reached a fever pitch lately. Earlier this week, AI chipmaker Nvidia announced that it’s pouring $100 billion into OpenAI as part of a “strategic partnership” to “build and deploy at least ten gigawatts of AI datacenters” — a deal that critics immediately slammed as self-serving.

“It may not be an exaggeration to write that NVIDIA — the key supplier of capital goods for the AI investment cycle — is currently carrying the weight of US economic growth,” Saravelos argued.

“The bad news is that in order for the tech cycle to continue contributing to GDP growth, capital investment needs to remain parabolic,” he concluded. “This is highly unlikely.”