The great wave of artificial intelligence enthusiasm that carried global markets to historic heights is now meeting the older, quieter force of reckoning. Investors who once bought the story are beginning to demand the substance behind it — asking not whether AI will change the world, but whether the companies they own can actually profit from that change at the prices they have paid. This is not a crisis of faith in the technology itself, but a maturation of the conversation around it: a market learning, as markets always must, to distinguish between a compelling vision and a sound investment