AI boom enters new phase as investors demand proof it is working

OpinionOpinion byGreg SmithNZ Herald·4 Aug, 2026 05:00 PM7 mins to readGreg Smith is an investment specialist at GenerateSatya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. The company signed more than US$130 billion of new data centre leases during the June quarter alone. Photo / Sven Hoppe, dpa For much of the past two years, the artificial intelligence story has been fairly simple. Companies mentioned AI, investors got excited, and share prices went up. That phase may now be ending.

But that does not mean the AI boom is over. In fact, the evidence increasingly points the other