I don’t think a bail out would work (which isn’t to say the Trump administration won’t try it - you can never confidently predict they won’t do something stupid). The problem the AI industry has is that they’ve burned $2T and don’t seem to have any clear idea of how to turn that into a profit - more money on the furnace doesn’t help that.

As much as the bank bailouts after 2008 left a bad taste in my mouth, banks are at least self evidently a profitable business that were able to successfully use the bailout to stay afloat.

I could potentially see the AI companies’ creditors getting a bailout but most of them seem to be private equity so a bailout would be really unpopular (although see my above comments on not betting against the current US leadership doing something stupid).

On the bright side, there’s a real chance we could see Larry Ellison go personally bankrupt. He lives on loans secured against Oracle shares and Oracle is currently endebted up to its eyeballs and borrowing at basically junk rates. If it goes down, those loans get called and he eats shit (to the delight of Sun Microsystems fans everywhere).