25 years ago the dot-com bubble burst. Is the AI bubble the next to burst ?

Navi Radjou
2 min readMar 11, 2025

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25 years later, history risks repeating itself.

In October 1999, I joined Forrester, a tech research and consulting firm in Cambridge, MA, as a junior analyst.

In 1999, the Internet mania was at full swing and the Web was the Big Thing: every young graduate was eager to launch a dot-com and get into e-commerce.

Just like with AI today, there was a strong belief then that “the Web is going to change everything, really everything”

Sadly, within 4 months after I joined Forrester, the company published a provocative report in early 2000 predicting the demise of dot-coms within 12 months.

And that’s exactly what happened.

Most dot-coms went belly up by 2001 and the stock market took a big hit (and before the market could recover 9/11 happened, further compounding the financial crisis)

25 years later, the much-hyped AI bubble seems ready to burst.

Clearly, we don’t learn anything from History :-(

I guess, in our Godless modern societies, humans have a desperate need to place their Faith in something large than themselves.

25 years ago, people placed their faith in the Web — and paid a high price (it turned out to be a Web of Deceit)

Today, people place their faith their AI — and risk paying a high price.

Beware of False Gods !

The lesson I learned in 2000 during the dot-com crash is not to focus my research on latest tech trends.

I chose to study “boring” subjects like supply chain, R&D, and B2B collaboration.

These topics are perennially relevant for businesses and never go out of fashion :-)

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Navi Radjou
Navi Radjou

Written by Navi Radjou

Indian-French-American Scholar. Author of Frugal Economy (2024). Expert in Frugal Innovation + Wise Leadership. TED Speaker. Visit: NaviRadjou.com

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