"Money was no object for the AI industry in early 2025. A vibe check crept in the second half of the year. OpenAI raised $40 billion at a $300 billion valuation. Safe Superintelligence and Thinking Machine Labs raised individual $2 billion seed rounds before shipping a single product. Even first-time founders were raising at a scale that once belonged only to Big Tech."
"The first half of 2025 matched the fervor, and investor interest, of the prior year. That mood has shifted in recent months to deliver a vibe check of sorts. Extreme optimism for AI, and the accompanying wild valuations, is still intact. But that rosy view is now being tempered with concerns over an AI bubble bursting, user safety, and the sustainability of technological progress at its current pace."
Massive capital flowed into AI in early 2025, including OpenAI's $40 billion raise and multi-billion seed rounds for new labs. Major firms spent heavily on talent and deals, with Meta investing nearly $15 billion to secure executives and AI companies projecting roughly $1.3 trillion in future infrastructure costs. Investor enthusiasm remained high in the first half of the year but cooled later as concerns emerged about a potential AI bubble, user safety risks, and whether current rates of technological progress and scaling require unsustainable investment levels. The industry faced intensified scrutiny and questions about viable business models and returns.
Read at TechCrunch
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