AI Spending Frenzy Echos Early Go-Go Days of Shale, Currie Says

The eye-popping amounts Big Tech is shelling out on artificial intelligence resembles shale’s golden age of spending before a price crash wiped out $2.6 trillion in equity, Carlyle Group Inc.’s Jeff Currie says.

Energy and technology are two of the most important pillars of the economy, leaving other key sectors including finance and health care “useless” without the other two, the veteran commodity market forecaster wrote in a research note Tuesday.

“The shale boom was arguably the most notorious ‘growth at all costs’ capex cycle in the modern era, where energy industry-wide capex reached 110-120% of cash flow at ...