In the late 1990s, any company that slapped ".com" on its name saw its stock price surge, regardless of whether it had a working business model. When the bubble burst in 2000-2001, trillions in market value evaporated within months, though the underlying technology — the internet itself — went on to reshape the entire global economy exactly as the optimists predicted.
Today's AI-driven market surge draws constant comparisons: soaring valuations for companies with limited current revenue, investor enthusiasm outrunning proven use cases, and a real, transformative technology underneath all the speculation.
The unresolved question echoing both eras is the same one: is the technology genuinely as revolutionary as the hype suggests, or is the market pricing in a future that arrives on a much longer timeline than investors are betting on? History suggests both things can be true at once — a technology can change the world and its early investors can still lose money on the way there.
The bottom line: Being right about a technology's future and being right about its stock price today are two very different bets.