The Great AI Pop: What Will We Call the First AI Bust?

TL;DR If the AI boom collapses in 2025 or 2026, it will not simply be remembered as an AI bubble. It will get a name. Likely future labels include The Great AI Pop, The First AI Bust, The AI Money Glitch, GPUgeddon, The Great Wrapper Extinction, AIgeddon, The AI Avalanche, and The First Agent Mass Extinction. This article explores how bubbles are usually named, which of these labels are most likely to stick, and what each name would signal about how history interprets this moment.

Good luck saying GPUgeddon if you are an AI. ????

Markets worldwide are suddenly shaking. Alphabet’s CEO has warned that the AI wave contains clear signs of irrationality. JPMorgan’s CEO has said bluntly that some AI investments will simply be lost. Major indexes across Asia, Europe, and the United States are falling sharply. For the first time, serious fear is entering the conversation about a possible AI bubble.

If this downturn deepens, it will not remain nameless. The dot com crash quickly picked up nicknames like dot bomb and tech wreck. Crypto downturns became known as crypto winter. Every bubble gets branded.

This article is an attempt to capture the names that future generations may use. If the AI bubble bursts, what will we call it?

How Bubbles Usually Get Their Names

Bubbles do not name themselves. The media, economists, and the public give them titles that stick. These names usually follow a few clear patterns.

Names Based on the Asset

• Tulip Mania was a seventeenth-century frenzy where tulip bulb prices surged to irrational heights before collapsing.

• Railway Mania was a nineteenth-century surge in rail investment that collapsed when profits failed to live up to the hype.

• The Housing Bubble was a mid-2000s surge in property prices driven by easy credit and speculation, which then collapsed.

• Dot com crash, a sharp early-2000s collapse when inflated internet company valuations imploded as revenue failed to materialise.

Names Based on the Feeling

• Irrational Exuberance, a term for markets gripped by euphoric optimism detached from fundamentals

• The Great Panic is a label for moments when collective fear overwhelms rational analysis and drives markets into a sudden retreat.

• The Great Financial Crisis, the 2008 meltdown, was triggered by collapsing housing markets and cascading credit failures.

Names Designed for Headlines

• Dot bomb, a headline-friendly label for early web companies that collapsed when hype outpaced any real revenue.

• Tech wreck: a punchy label for a broad tech-sector slump when overhyped valuations suddenly collapse.

• Crypto winter is a prolonged slump in digital asset prices, marked by fading hype and the collapse of weak projects.

• Flash crash, a sudden algorithm-driven market plunge that snaps back within minutes.

The names that survive in history are usually short, punchy, and immediately understandable.  

The Leading Candidates for an AI Bust

Below are the names that are most likely to become the future shorthand for the collapse of the 2020s AI boom. These are the names that match the psychology, economics, and symbolism of this moment.

The Primary Contenders

The Great AI Pop
This is the most likely winner. It is short, simple, and clearly mirrors historical naming conventions, such as The Great Recession. It works across all media formats and accommodates both gentle and severe corrections.

The First AI Bust
This name acknowledges that AI is not going away. It implies this is only the first cycle in a long century of AI evolution. Economists and historians may prefer this term.

The AI Money Glitch
This name hits the exact emotional tone of a financial system behaving like a buggy game. It fits a world where demand was mispriced, capex was overbuilt, and ROI never matched the slide decks.

Names Tied to Hardware and Infrastructure

GPUgeddon
This name takes over if the story becomes one of GPU oversupply, depreciation shocks, or cheaper competitors undercutting the hardware economics. It is a media-friendly name with instant meme value.

AIgeddon
A more dramatic, all-encompassing label if the crash ripples beyond tech into the wider economy.

The AI Avalanche
This is the name if the collapse happens fast. It implies a chain reaction. It fits a scenario like the one triggered by Pichai’s warning where indexes across continents fall within hours of each other. If speed becomes the defining characteristic, this name wins.

Names Tied to Products, Hype, and Failed Promises

The Great Wrapper Extinction
This name becomes dominant if hundreds of thin GPT-based tool companies vanish overnight. It frames the crash as a cleanup of shallow products.

The First Agent Mass Extinction
This name applies if enterprise agent deployments prove unreliable, unsafe, or unscalable. If companies shut down their agent teams, this name will be everywhere.

Names Tied to Broader Historical Memory

The 2nd AI Winter
This term becomes the headline if the downturn triggers:

• layoffs in AI research

• dramatic cuts in AI R&D budgets

• cancelled data center projects

• investor exhaustion

• regulatory tightening

This name is powerful because it frames the crash as a repeat of an earlier era. It stings precisely because this time, people believed AI was finally unstoppable.

Which Names Future Generations Will Likely Choose

Not all names survive. History tends to compress events into one or two labels.

Most likely long-term winner: The Great AI Pop
It is clean, neutral, and fits the historical naming style used for major economic recalibrations.

If the downturn is slow and chilling: The 2nd AI Winter
This becomes the accepted academic term if research funding collapses or adoption slows dramatically.

If the crash is sudden and violent: The AI Avalanche
This name wins if the defining feature is speed and contagion.

If hardware economics collapse: GPUgeddon
If the core failure is in capex assumptions, this name dominates media coverage.

If finance is the core failure: The AI Money Glitch
This becomes the favourite term in economic reports and case studies.

If the ecosystem cleans itself Darwin style: The Great Wrapper Extinction
This becomes the label for startup retrospective writing.

If agents implode: The First Agent Mass Extinction
This term will be used heavily in engineering post-mortems.  

What the Nickname Will Reveal About the Autopsy

The name that sticks will reveal what society believes the core mistake was.

If the world calls it “The Great AI Pop”, the belief will be:
• The technology was real
• The expectations were just inflated
• The correction was natural
… a mild, rational interpretation.

If it is remembered as “The 2nd AI Winter”, the belief will be:
• The hype outran the science
• Companies lost interest
• Funding dried up
• We needed time to digest the tech
… a story of disillusionment.

If it is called “The AI Avalanche”, the belief will be:
• The crash was fast
• The crash was contagious
• Sentiment flipped instantly
… a story of panic and velocity.

If it becomes known as “GPUgeddon“, the belief will be:
• too many GPUs
• too many data centers
• too much capex
• economics that never made sense
… a story of infrastructure overshoot.

If it is remembered as “The AI Money Glitch”, the belief will be:
• Revenue models were fantasy
• Forecasts were delusional
• Circular financing disguised the truth
… story of financial misjudgment.

If it becomes “The Great Wrapper Extinction”, the belief will be:
• AI wrappers were not real businesses
• Thin products did not survive competition
• Deep tech won
… a Darwinian framing.

If it becomes “The First Agent Mass Extinction”, the belief will be:
• Agents were not enterprise-ready ready
• Autonomy failed
• Reliability and safety lagged behind ambition
… a story of premature deployment.  

Why Naming the Crash Early Matters

It may seem like a novelty, but the label matters because labels shape memory.

Names shape how the public remembers AI.
They decide whether AI is recalled as a useful technology that went through a normal boom-and-bust cycle, or as a symbol of speculative mania.

Names shape regulation
A label like GPUgeddon focuses regulators on infrastructure.
A label like The AI Money Glitch focuses them on finance.

Names shape future investment cycles
A gentle name leads to a fast recovery.
A severe name slows capital for years.

Being early in this naming conversation gives you a place in the historical narrative.  

Whether the AI bubble bursts in 2025 or 2026 is still unknown, but the early signs are there. Stocks are falling worldwide on warnings from major tech CEOs. Optimism is giving way to caution. If this downturn becomes a real correction, the world will name it.

• Will it be The Great AI Pop, a clean release of excessive enthusiasm?
• Will it be GPUgeddon, a reckoning with hardware economics?
• Will it be The AI Avalanche, a sudden and violent market collapse?

Or will we look back and call it The 2nd AI Winter, a moment when belief finally cracked?

Whatever phrase wins, it will define how history remembers this moment. And by naming these possibilities now, you are planting the seeds for the vocabulary the world may use in the decades to come.  

The International Wildcards: Political Branding and Circular Finance

Not all bubble names come from economists or journalists. Sometimes the label that sticks comes from political theatre or public cynicism. The AI boom has two unique ingredients that could spawn entirely different naming conventions outside financial circles.

The “Trump AI Fiasco” Scenario

If Donald Trump continues to attach his name to enormous AI and chip investment announcements, there is a chance an international nickname emerges linking the crash directly to him. Trump is happy to claim credit for national-scale megaprojects worth hundreds of billions of dollars. If these projects later stall, underdeliver, or collapse under their own financial weight, the global press may find it irresistible to frame the fallout as part of his legacy.

The name “The Trump AI Fiasco” becomes likely if:

• Large government-backed AI or chip investments implode

• Promised facilities are cancelled or delayed indefinitely

• Political blame games dominate the narrative

• Overseas media decide to frame it as an American misadventure

This would mirror how other international crises were branded around political leaders rather than the underlying industry mechanics. It would not be the academic term, but it could easily become the public one in Europe or Asia.

The “Big AI Circlejerk” or “Big AI Moneygoround” Scenario

Another strong candidate for a public nickname focuses on the circular financing structure that defined the AI boom. Major cloud providers, chip companies, and AI labs invested in one another. Many of the contracts involved money that was never truly exchanged, only promised, booked, and recycled back into valuation uplifts and investor slides.

In internet culture and among cynical commentators, two labels are almost guaranteed to appear if this network collapses.

• The Big AI Circlejerk

• The Big AI Moneygoround

Either name wins if:

• Companies are exposed to selling capacity to partners who cannot actually pay

• Revenue numbers turn out to be mostly internal recycling

• Valuations collapse as soon as real cash flow is examined

• The public becomes aware that the entire AI economy briefly resembles a giant self-referential hype machine

These names will not appear in official reports, but they have a very high chance of becoming the dominant social media term. They capture the idea that the AI boom was not fuelled by real demand but by companies taking turns inflating each other.

How these wildcards fit into the broader naming landscape

• If the collapse is primarily political, expect “The Trump AI Fiasco” to dominate outside the United States.
• If the collapse is primarily financial, expect “The Big AI Moneygoround” to become the internet’s favorite shorthand.
• If the collapse is both political and financial, both names may run in parallel depending on the audience.

Either way, they reflect a more profound truth: the AI boom of the 2020s is as much a cultural event as a technological one. The final nickname will reveal not only what broke, but who the world decides to blame.