Technology companies that survive full market cycles often demonstrate greater resilience once speculative excess fades. At the "2026 Leasing Industry Production-Finance Ecology Conference" held in Shanghai on September 22, co-hosted by Shanghai United Assets and Equity Exchange and China Business Network, HuaFu Securities Chief Economist Guan Tao delivered a keynote speech titled "Production-Finance Capital Interaction in Technological Revolutions: Insights from the Internet's Rise for the AI Era."

Guan Tao noted that capital is currently flowing heavily into artificial intelligence, sparking widespread debate: one view holds that AI valuations are inflated and showing bubble tendencies, while another suggests AI may be at the start of a super-long cycle spanning two to three decades. In his view, understanding how future AI industry capital and financial capital will interact is a question worth serious consideration.

Drawing on the work of economist Carlota Perez, Guan Tao pointed out that almost every technological revolution has been preceded by a wave of frenzied financial speculation before eventually ushering in a golden age of dramatically increased productivity. He then reviewed the most recent technological revolution—the rise of the internet era.

"The rise, fall, and rebirth of the internet era offer several lessons for today's AI age," Guan Tao said. "Both theoretical analysis and empirical evidence show that the formation and bursting of bubbles during technological revolution waves may be a cyclical phenomenon that is difficult to completely avoid in industrial evolution, and it is also hard to simply judge as good or bad: bubble bursts cause short-term capital market volatility in the near term, while also accelerating the survival of the fittest within industries, and often only technology companies that traverse full cycles demonstrate stronger vitality once the speculative froth recedes."

Specifically, he outlined three lessons from the internet's rise and fall for the AI era. For investors, the first is to rationally understand the pace of technological change. During the early formation of the internet bubble, the market's long-term judgment that the internet would disrupt traditional industries and reshape the economic landscape was essentially correct, yet it mistakenly assumed that transformative technology alone could justify unlimited asset valuations; in reality, the speed at which technology is adopted and commercial maturity is achieved is far slower than the pace of stock price appreciation during the bubble accumulation phase, meaning markets need a long time to recover after the bubble bursts. The second is to be wary of narrative-driven investment traps. The third is to diversify investments to hedge against systemic risks.

For enterprises, the first lesson is to maintain strategic prudence, avoiding blindly following industry trends and refraining from relying on capital injections to achieve extensive scale growth. The second is that market demand is the foundation of corporate survival; quality companies rooted in real demand with mature business models, even if they experience short-term valuation pullbacks and market capitalization fluctuations, can still achieve value recovery and ultimately succeed over the long term. The third is to flexibly respond to market volatility and shocks; technology companies should not treat expansion as an unshakeable doctrine, but should balance flexibility and stability in their operational strategies, dynamically balancing scale growth and risk control based on changes in the external environment, while continuously consolidating their core competitiveness.

For regulators, Guan Tao offered four recommendations: first, standardize the public opinion and communication ecosystem to curb the spread of irrational sentiment; second, improve risk isolation mechanisms to prevent capital from shifting away from the real economy into financial speculation; third, cultivate patient capital to build a sound ecosystem; and fourth, improve macroeconomic policy.