A few months ago ago @pluralistic described the AI bubble thusly:

"The collapse of the AI bubble is going to be ugly. Seven AI companies currently account for more than a third of the stock market, and they endlessly pass around the same $100b IOU."

I've been thinking of it as a check-kiting scam, but it's really simpler than that: it's a game of Hot Potato. Whoever has the IOU when the bubble pops loses the round. The rest scavenge the parts and then start shaking VC trees for the next round.