Twice a year, the International Monetary Fund publishes a sort of health check on global finance. In it, it lists what could, tomorrow, make markets tremble.
On Tuesday, in Bangkok, it added artificial intelligence to the top of the list.
What the IMF says
In its report, the IMF identifies three risks that could cause severe turbulence on the markets in the short term. A correction in AI-related stocks, if investments or profits disappoint. A sharp rise in the rates at which governments borrow. And a major cyberattack.
On AI, the message is clear: the consequences of a correction could be global.
The IMF acknowledges that markets have so far held up remarkably well, buoyed by better-than-expected growth, highly profitable companies and optimism around AI. Investment in AI has even helped offset the effects of the war in the Middle East. But one of its senior officials summed up the situation with a phrase: resilience is not necessarily safety.
What is a correction?
When investors get excited about a technology, they buy shares in the companies concerned, whose price rises, sometimes well beyond what those companies actually earn. They are betting on future profits.
If those profits are slow to materialise, or turn out more modest than expected, investors sell, and prices fall sharply. That is a correction. It can be moderate, or turn into a crash.
Why AI is worrying
Because a huge amount of money has gone into it. The tech giants are investing hundreds of billions in chips and data centres, betting on revenues that have yet to arrive.
Because the money is going round in circles. The IMF is concerned about circular deals between large companies: an investor funds an AI company, which uses that money to buy its products. According to the report, around 1,400 billion dollars in future revenues rest on this type of arrangement. If one link gives way, the whole chain wobbles.
Because part of it is financed by debt. Borrowed money amplifies everything: gains when it goes up, losses when it comes down. We saw this with Oracle's borrowing for its data centres.
Between March 2000 and October 2002, the Nasdaq index, where the major American technology stocks are listed, lost nearly 80% of its value. That was the bursting of the internet bubble. Yet the internet did not disappear, quite the opposite: some companies from that era, such as Amazon, became giants. The lesson matters: a technology can be very real and revolutionary, and its companies can still be overvalued on the stock market.
And the banks?
The IMF is reassuring on one point: in its simulations, the banking system holds up overall against a shock combining AI, bond markets and energy. But it notes that some of the most fragile banks would end up in difficulty, and that this share is growing. It also has concerns about insurers and pension funds, which hold an increasing amount of assets that are hard to sell off quickly.
The report finally draws a link with cybersecurity: in 2026, in more than 70% of cases, software vendors had almost no time to patch a flaw before it was exploited. This echoes the findings of Microsoft's report on AI-powered hackers.
What this means for you
If you have savings invested in the stock market, for example through a unit-linked life insurance policy or a fund that tracks the major global markets, the American tech giants often carry a lot of weight in it. That is no reason to panic, but it is a good reason to know what your savings contain. Alyriaz does not give investment advice: for a decision, talk to a professional.
What to take away
The IMF is not predicting a crash. It says the risk exists, that it is serious, and that if it materialised, the shock would not stay within Silicon Valley.
This may be the best measure of how important AI has become: it no longer only transforms our tools. It now carries part of the global economy on its shoulders.