The AI-driven rally pushed major indexes higher while prompting strategists and portfolio managers to flag overinvestment risks. Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet and Broadcom accounted for a large share of S&P gains as Big Tech announced a combined capital-spending leap expected to approach $440 billion next year. OpenAI’s projected infrastructure commitments—reported at eye-popping scales—fueled debate over whether spending will outpace near-term demand. In interviews and notes, Invesco’s Brian Levitt and other market strategists compared the current build-out to past infrastructure booms such as railroads and the internet, warning that the pace of capital deployment could overshoot immediate economic needs. Gene Goldman and other advisors countered that a crash requires a broader market downturn, not just cooling sentiment in a single sector. For higher‑education research and IT groups, the immediate implications are twofold: intensified competition for compute and talent, and pressure to justify large investments in AI infrastructure. "Capex" refers to capital expenditures—long‑lived investments in hardware and facilities that drive future research capacity.