A Silicon Valley therapist says 99% of his clients cite burnout. The pattern signals a hidden risk to the AI productivity thesis priced into Big Tech stocks.
Nick Sanchez, a licensed marriage and family therapist in the San Francisco Bay Area, told Business Insider that 99% of his clients cite burnout as a primary problem. His caseload of roughly 18 to 20 clients a week consists almost entirely of high-performing individuals: founders and executives in tech.
Sanchez described the burnout as a low-grade depression that strips joy from work and fractures attention. AI, he said, enables deep work on multiple projects at once but never stops. "You have to be the one to decide when it's time to pause, and that's where AI burnout can come in."
The profile of the burnt-out worker, someone who would work more if they could, is the exact demographic that drives product roadmaps at Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft, analysts tracking the sector said. The burnout patterns Sanchez describes point to a retention risk for the talent that makes the AI boom possible. The productivity gains investors are betting on may slow if the culture cannot adapt.
Sanchez uses exposure therapy techniques to treat burnout, starting with small breaks. "I wouldn't tell a burnt-out founder to take two weeks off from working and not look at their phone. They'd find another therapist," he said. Instead, he negotiates 15-minute walks or lunch breaks outside. The resistance to rest, analysts said, is a feature of the culture that built the industry.
Sanchez also described how AI fractures attention. "With so many different types of LLMs and agents available, it's possible to be working deeply on four or five projects at a time, as opposed to being focused on one area at a time. That level of work requires a different muscle to develop in our brain."
For investors, the account adds a data point to the debate around AI productivity, analysts said, pointing to a rising human cost of the boom. The projected returns on AI investment may take longer to materialize if the industry cannot manage the attention demands of its own tools, they said.
Sanchez said he advises clients to try working on only two projects at a time instead of six. For a sector built on scaling everything, that advice is harder to follow than it sounds.
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