Super Bowl commercials are a strangely prominent aspect of the big game, and as The New York Times reported, Super Bowl LX's ad roster "struck some on Wall Street as ominous."

What's happening?

Super Bowl LX was played on Feb. 8 at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, and as is often the case, the event's commercials sparked major discourse.

Super Bowl commercials are nearly as old as the Super Bowl itself, but a 2025 analysis by Sacred Heart University pegged Apple's 1984 ad as the tipping point for game night ads.

As Super Bowl LX wore on, users on Reddit complained of "strange and awkward" spots, with some citing the use of AI editing tools they deemed inferior to computer-generated imagery.

"The A.I. Bowl, as some are calling it, appeared to overshadow the Seattle Seahawks' victory," the New York Times noted, referencing a bevy of artificial intelligence-related ads and an abundance of AI-generated content.

Deeply mixed public opinion about generative AI aside, the paper highlighted a worrisome trend with Super Bowl commercials of yore. As the Times observed, Super Bowl LVI in 2022 became known as the "Crypto Bowl" due to relentless cryptocurrency shilling in that year's ads.

"By the end of the year, FTX had declared bankruptcy and Coinbase shares had tanked," the outlet warned. 

Moreover, Super Bowl XXXIV in 2000 was dubbed the "Dot Com Bowl" for similar reasons — and, as Business Insider explained, the "dot com bubble" abruptly burst on March 10, 2000. 

It's no secret that investors and tech CEOs have become increasingly concerned that the so-called AI arms race is a bubble. The Times quoted a tweet by investor George Noble about what the Super Bowl's AI ad blitz could mean.

"I've been in markets for 45 years. When an entire sector floods the most expensive advertising real estate on the planet, it's not a signal to buy. It's a signal to think VERY carefully about what comes next," he explained.

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Nobel even had a name for the phenomenon, coined by friend and fellow investor Dougie Kass: the "Stock Market Super Bowl Indicator."

Why is this concerning?

Nobel wasn't the only investing expert to raise such concerns — Michael Burry, the Wall Street whiz famous for predicting the 2008 housing crash, warned of an AI bubble in November.

Burry's predictions carry weight given his track record, but Google CEO Sundar Pichai admitted the search giant would take a huge hit if its bets on AI don't pan out.

That the tech industry is deeply leveraged into AI is well known; analysts have spotted signs that the putative AI bubble could be wavering, and economists have warned that a crash could be catastrophic.

It's not just massive speculative investments at issue, either — the advent of AI has disrupted several business sectors, wreaked havoc in schools, and brought hiring to a screeching halt.

At the same time, AI data centers have become highly controversial, in no small part because their energy demand has caused electric bills nationwide to soar.

AI and data centers are resource-hungry, and the Department of Energy admitted that the public grid cannot keep up with increasing energy demand.

What's being done about it?

While tech firms have pressed forward with AI plans, communities fought back in 2025.

In the second half of the year, public backlash stalled or halted nearly $100 million in planned data center development.

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