AI Bubble or Not, the Stock Prices of These Dotcom Darlings Are Soaring Like It's 1999

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The Dotcom Bubble may not be back, but the Dotcom darlings sure are.

Shares of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), spun-off from HP Inc. in 2015, jumped nearly 20% on Tuesday after the server marker’s quarterly results blew past estimates on strong demand from artificial intelligence data centers. HPE shares have more than doubled in value this year, and were on track Tuesday to close at a record high.

Booming demand for AI-enabling equipment has breathed fresh life into the businesses of tech firms some investors not so long ago might have dismissed as dinosaurs. Dell (DELL) on Thursday reported its earnings more than tripled last quarter on revenue that nearly doubled, driven by a more than 700% increase in AI-optimized server sales. Networking equipment maker Cisco (CSCO) in May nearly doubled its full-year AI-related orders forecast.1

The eye-popping gains of AI stocks in recent years have prompted a fair bit of hand-wringing, with skeptics drawing parallels between the AI data center boom and the internet buildout that helped fuel the Dotcom Bubble. Bulls highlight the differences between the late 1990s and today, including interest rate expectations and the fiscal discipline of AI's biggest investors.

Their stocks are rising with their revenues. Dell shares jumped 33% last Friday, and have more than tripled in value this year. Cisco stock is up 70% in 2026. Even companies for whom AI benefits remain more hope than reality, like chipmaker Intel (INTC), have caught an updraft. Intel’s stock is up nearly 200% year-to-date, lifted by a partnership with AI chip giant Nvidia (NVDA) and optimism that it can reap rewards from its position as America’s only homegrown chip manufacturer.

Long-time investors in these companies have been here before. The buildout of internet infrastructure in the late 1990s fueled rapid growth for hardware providers such as Cisco, Intel, Dell and Hewlett-Packard. Excitement about the internet and low interest rates stoked speculative fervor, causing the Nasdaq to quintuple between 1995 and 2000 before it all came crashing down in March 2000. The Nasdaq lost nearly 80% of its value over the next two years.

Today’s AI beneficiaries were among the few tech companies to survive the bubble, along with software giants Microsoft (MSFT) and Oracle (ORCL) and e-commerce pioneers Amazon (AMZN) and eBay (EBAY). But their investors felt the pain. Cisco shares fell almost 90% between March 2000 and October 2002. It took the stock 25 years to fully recover from its Dotcom losses. Intel declined 85% over the same period, losses it didn’t recoup until April of this year.

The recovery of Dotcom Bubble highs adds to the unsettling parallels some investors have drawn between today’s AI buildout and the internet boom. Tech giants are spending massive sums on data center infrastructure in a bet that enterprises, consumers and governments will shell out trillions of dollars on AI services in the future. Pivoting to AI is the present day equivalent of tacking “dotcom” to a company’s name in the '90s. As during the Dotcom era, buzzy tech companies are racing to cash in on piping hot demand for new listings.

To be sure, the AI and Dotcom eras are as different as they are similar. The companies betting the house on AI are some of the most profitable, dominant companies in modern history. Corporate earnings are growing at a healthy clip despite a litany of macroeconomic headwinds, and analysts see signs of benefits accruing to both AI enablers and adopters. And unlike in the early 2000s, interest rates are likely doing more to constrain asset values than inflate them.

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