Bankers warn of central market crash thanks to AI boom

“Should hyperscalers slow or halt the aggressive pace of capex deployment, many borrowers across the supply chain could struggle to replace lost revenue and service their debt.”

The BIS cited the financial relationships between data centre builders, shadow banks, and the AI giants.

“The opacity of AI-sector financing compounds these vulnerabilities,” the BIS said.

BIS general manager Pablo Hernández de Cos said that the benefit of an AI boom on the economy is questionable, adding that “AI exuberance” could also create issues for the global financial market.

“One risk is that large-scale investment in AI infrastructure becomes excessive, as each firm tries to outcompete rivals and dominate market share,” he said.

In May, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) also warned that AI could create a global financial crisis, but instead cited the rise in AI-powered cyber attacks.

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“AI-driven cyber risks could destabilise the financial system if not managed carefully,” the IMF said, closely following the release of Anthropic’s Mythos.

The IMF added that these models could find and abuse vulnerabilities “even when used by non-experts”.

The IMF did, however, acknowledge that the technology could be useful, but that “integration, governance and human oversight” would need to be prioritised for that to be the case. It also advised businesses to build on their “business continuity and disaster recovery, cyber and quality assurance programmes, and good cyber hygiene practices”.

“Without robust cyber resilience strategies and real-time visibility, the finance sector risks sleepwalking into deeper vulnerabilities,” said Andy Ward, international senior vice president at Absolute Security, a cyber resilience platform.

“Attackers are already leveraging AI to accelerate and scale threats, which can lead to major consequences for businesses.

“Cyber defences must evolve with equal urgency, or risk being left dangerously exposed.”