The future is here¶

By 2026 sovereign funds hold stakes in AI labs, data centres are planned by the gigawatt, and the services people use keep a record of what they type. A bubble broke once before, in 2000, and left fibre in the ground and search logs on servers. Both outlasted the boom that paid for them. Governments are in this round as investors, customers and regulators at once, and some of what they are buying into may be expensive to undo.

Last updated: 27 October 2026