What is the AI bubble? Analyst: Open AI is the "Lehman Brothers of the industry". If it fails, the whole market will collapse!

What is the AI bubble? Analyst: Open AI is the "Lehman Brothers of the industry". If it fails, the whole market will collapse!

Independent analyst Ed Zitron recently stated that the artificial intelligence (AI) bubble is simple because it is actually a bubble for the company OpenAI.

With ChatGPT developer OpenAI on the verge of a monumental IPO, the researcher and AI skeptic says OpenAI is the only reason people should care about artificial intelligence — and that its failure would trigger a crash similar to the one caused by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. OpenAI secretly submitted an IPO application to the U.S.

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on June 8, 2026, officially launching the listing process, with a target valuation of approximately US$1 trillion. However, due to litigation and market competition, there is uncertainty about the official listing time, and the expected window period is from the fall of 2026 to early 2027.

Zitron has repeatedly warned about artificial intelligence, especially OpenAI, and last month he issued a report saying OpenAI's financial situation was in disarray. He wrote in the latest article published on July 15, "ChatGPT was released in November 2022, which was exactly the right time for the technology industry when creativity was exhausted.

The emergence of OpenAI provided justification for an era of enthusiasm and luxury." He also pointed out that OpenAI is also the raison d’être of its biggest competitor, Anthropic.

This is partly because Anthropic’s founders are from OpenAI, but also because it has received financial support from technology giants, who have backed OpenAI’s main competitors in order to gain a foothold in the field of artificial intelligence.

Zitron believes that the AI bubble emerged entirely because of Sam Altman’s company and the attention it received from the public, investors, and the ecosystem of companies that thrived under its influence. He wrote: "The only reason the AI bubble has lasted for so long is that OpenAI has not collapsed yet.

Its failure will be a watershed - comparable to Lehman Brothers in the artificial intelligence world, it will mark the end of one era and the beginning of another." However, Zitron also said that he cannot predict how or when OpenAI will go bankrupt, but he believes that it will be a watershed event that will disrupt the market emerging around artificial

intelligence transactions and the economy driven by endless capital expenditures by companies in pursuit of artificial intelligence goals. For example, if OpenAI stops paying infrastructure companies like CoreWeave and Oracle, Zitron speculates that these companies will be unable to pay their own debts.

If OpenAI's troubles worsen, it could remove the free version of ChatGPT and raise user fees, ultimately causing investors to lose confidence in investing in AI startups. "I think once OpenAI collapses, it will be a sharp blow to the entire stock market, which will herald a bigger decline because everyone will realize that the AI bubble has burst," he added.

Zitron concluded by stressing that the spending driving the AI bubble represents “the largest capital misallocation in history.” Gary Marcus, a well-known AI researcher at New York University and founder of the machine learning company Geometric Intelligence, has used this sentence exactly before.

He also raised major concerns about the artificial intelligence bubble. (

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