Does the current frenzy around Artificial Intelligence give you a sense of déjà vu? The soaring stock valuations, the breathless promises of a transformed world, the billions being poured into a new technology—for anyone who remembers the late 1990s, the parallels to the dot-com bubble are uncanny.

According to the International Monetary Fund’s chief economist, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, that comparison is more than just a feeling. The current AI boom shares many characteristics with its dot-com predecessor. But before you start prepping your financial bunker, he also pointed out a crucial difference that suggests we should be preparing for a different kind of landing this time.

Even A Bust Is Not a Systemic Crisis

Let’s be clear: the risk of an AI “bust” is very real. Just like in the late 90s, the market is pricing in massive, world-changing productivity gains that simply haven’t shown up in the economic data yet. We’re seeing hundreds of billions invested in chips, data centers, and computing power based on a promise. If that promise takes too long to materialize, investor sentiment could sour, triggering a sharp correction in AI-related stocks—much like the dot-com crash of 2000.

But here’s the key: this boom isn’t built on a mountain of debt.

The tech firms leading the charge are using their own massive cash reserves to fund this race. This is a critical distinction from the 2008 housing bubble, where excessive leverage (debt) in the property market led to a full-blown global financial crisis when it collapsed.

Think of it this way: if a tech giant’s AI stock holdings plummet, its shareholders take a painful hit. But it doesn’t necessarily trigger defaults that cascade through the banking system. It’s a significant difference that suggests an AI bust would be more of a contained event for equity holders, not a systemic threat to the broader economy.

The Inflation Wrinkle

While the financial system might be insulated from a direct blow, the AI boom is having a more immediate, and slightly problematic, effect on the economy right now. All that investment is supercharging demand and consumption, which in turn is helping to keep inflation stubbornly high.

The IMF notes that this spending is propping up U.S. and global growth, but without the associated productivity gains (yet), it just adds more fuel to the inflation fire. This is one of several factors—along with a tight labor supply and the delayed impact of the administration’s tariffs—that has led the IMF to forecast that inflation will remain above the Fed’s 2% target well into 2026.

So while the AI craze might not be setting us up for another 2008, it’s not without consequences. The biggest risk today isn’t a systemic collapse, but a longer, more grinding fight against inflation and a potentially painful hangover for investors who have bet big on a future that’s taking its time to arrive.