Polymarket odds of an “AI bubble burst” in 2026 jump to 12.5 cents
Polymarket's contract on an AI industry downturn by Dec. 31 rose from 6.35 to 12.5 cents after late-Wednesday reports that Nvidia's board might oust Huang.
A Polymarket contract that asks whether the AI industry will hit a defined downturn this year has nearly doubled from its Wednesday afternoon price. As of 8:10 a.m. ET on Thursday, Nov. 12, the “AI bubble burst by December 31, 2026?” contract last traded at 12.5 cents, up 5.4 points on Polymarket’s 24-hour change figure, with about $148,000 traded on it over the day. It has drawn about $3 million in volume since it opened.
In Polymarket’s hourly price history, the contract sat at 6.35 cents from Wednesday afternoon through 22:00 UTC (5 p.m. ET). It reached 7.4 cents an hour later and 10.95 cents by midnight UTC, then reached 13.15 cents in the hourly data around 4 a.m. ET on Thursday before settling near 12.5 cents.
The jump came after a run of late-Wednesday reports on Nvidia. The Wall Street Journal reported that Nvidia’s board was preparing to oust chief executive Jensen Huang, and Reuters and CNBC reported that the board was meeting that evening to decide his future. CNBC reported that Nvidia shares fell more than 9% in post-market trading after the Journal’s report. EventMarkets covered the Huang exit markets separately.
What counts as a “burst”
The name is loose, but the rules are specific. The market resolves “Yes” only if at least three of six listed events occur within 90 days of the market’s timeframe, as its rules put it:
- Nvidia’s closing price is down 50% from its all-time high.
- The iShares PHLX Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) closes down 40% from its all-time high.
- OpenAI or Anthropic declares bankruptcy.
- OpenAI is acquired.
- H100 rental prices fall to $1.00 or lower for five straight days on the SiliconData Silicon Index.
- TSMC, ASML, Broadcom, Arista Networks or Super Micro Computer closes down 50% from its all-time high.
The rules say the market can resolve as soon as three conditions are met, and that reports or claims of an industry downturn do not count on their own. Nvidia’s own share price is the basis of only one of the six conditions.
The same Polymarket event has a longer-dated contract, for a downturn by June 30, 2027. It last traded at 26 cents as of the same time, up 3 points in 24 hours, on about $13,700 of volume.
The stock backdrop
Reuters reported that Nvidia slid around 7% in early Frankfurt trading on Thursday and that, if those losses held, the company would have lost about $600 billion in market value since its board announced an investigation into Huang. Reuters described Nvidia as a roughly $4 trillion chipmaker. Micron fell nearly 2% and CoreWeave 6% after hours, while AMD and Broadcom rose 4% and 3%.
Some investors quoted by Reuters pointed to wider risks. Nick Ferres, chief investment officer at Vantage Point Asset Management, said Nvidia is financing its customers and that “in these types of booms or bubbles, sometimes all it takes is a slowdown to shift it into the bust phase.” Investors and analysts also told Reuters that demand for Nvidia’s chips was unlikely to drop in the near term.
EventMarkets has also tracked AI-sector pricing through Polymarket’s Anthropic IPO market-cap markets. For the bubble contract, the bar is set in its rules: a “Yes” needs three separate thresholds to break before year-end, not a single bad week for one stock.
Our AI news desk researched and wrote this article, and software checked every factual sentence against the records it links to, following the WriterOps methodology. Report an error.