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By Andy Tyra, Chief Product Officer, Akeneo
Over the past few years, AI adoption and integration has accelerated across every industry. 2025 marked the year AI investments were made at historic rates, echoing the dot-com boom in the early 2000s. If you weren’t one of those discussing AI, you’re now racing to catch up. In fact, there are now more than 1,300 AI startup companies that claim valuations of over $100 million, with almost 500 AI unicorns.
The sheer amount of growth in the past year signals not just innovation, but that we are in an AI bubble, meaning AI has triggered a significant return to the flow of venture capital investments. In order to survive the AI bubble, companies feel the need to tout themselves as “AI-powered”, regardless of how relevant the technology actually is to their business.
As with previous tech hype cycles, the correction is coming. Many organizations will struggle to maintain momentum beyond the initial surge. To ensure success beyond the burst, companies must take steps to build for long-term, durable innovation.
AI’s Collapse WIll Be About Strategy Misalignment
In the current landscape, companies have been more focused on the ways they can create and build AI tools rather than the actual business model and how they will use the tools, something that cannot be done if long-term success is the end goal, especially when underperforming AI models can cost companies up to 6% of their annual revenue.
Many of today’s AI companies lack the foundational aspects that make AI deliverable in real business contexts. Recent research shows that 85% of AI projects are failing due to the low quality and inconsistent data inputted into the model. Despite the smartest AI algorithms, output is only as good as the data that’s received, proving the alignment of data, systems and workflows are everything when it comes to effectiveness.
To see AI investments pay off in 2026 and beyond the bubble’s burst, IT leaders and businesses have to make the decision to align their business strategies with an interconnected, flexible, and API-first tech stack to build ecosystems that accelerate transformation and results. Breaking the silos between IT leaders and other business units is critical to streamlining decisions that unlock AI’s potential to the fullest.
The Infrastructure Underneath Will Power the Next Era
Even though not every company’s investment took off in the dot-com era and eventual crash, the infrastructure left behind supported innovations for the future – and that same principle will apply once the AI bubble bursts.
As companies continue to make their AI investments, they also are likely modernizing the infrastructures to support AI-driven workloads and tech stacks. When modernizing to support AI modes, start with adopting open, API-first systems that allow data to flow seamlessly, eliminating silos and ultimately enhancing business collaboration. The short-lived AI companies will be those who fail to modernize their foundations as they build AI on top of their own, siloed systems, making them vulnerable as the market tightens.
Even if the individual AI project being bet on doesn’t follow through or pay off in the way it was initially meant to, those who invest in long-term tech stack evolutions and stay aligned with business needs will be those who see the most pay off in the long run. Future-proofing architecture will never be a downfall; it’s when you fail to upkeep systems that can’t adapt with the latest technological innovations that failures arise.
The Bubble Will Burst, But Innovation Won’t
The AI boom is like all previous tech hypes that came before it, and it won’t end any differently either. However, IT and business leaders can take lessons from previous hype bubble bursts to ensure they are one of the success stories beyond the AI bubble.
By taking steps to align core business strategies with AI investments and modernizing the infrastructure underneath to be agile for all types of innovation, companies will find themselves in a strong position to move quickly on the next inevitable boom in big tech.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andy is collaborating with the Engineering, Product, and Design teams to define Akeneo’s overall technical and product strategy and lead the company toward operating in a multi-product modality. Tyra was a founding team member on AmazonFresh and AWS Marketplace, building these businesses to materiality from the very beginning. He also led Whereby as CEO in 2023.
