It wasn’t so long ago that the mere mention of vague plans related to artificial intelligence was enough to dramatically boost a publicly listed company’s share price. As the FT’s Lex column highlighted at the weekend, while AI can push up values, it can also inflate expectations “to a painful degree”.

There is nothing vague about Kingspan’s plans to spin off its advanced building systems unit, Advnsys. To the cheers of investors, the Cavan-headquartered insulation giant in late September unveiled the idea of floating an initial 25 per cent of the business, which is well-positioned to capitalise on the AI-fuelled data centre construction boom.

Following the announcement, Kingspan’s share price surged as much as 13.5 per cent before returning to Earth over the intervening weeks.

Something similar happened on Monday when the Dublin-listed group issued an upbeat trading update, highlighting a 10 per cent rise in Advnsys’s sales in the first nine months of the year. The unit is experiencing “an ever-increasing wave of inbound inquiries”, it said, ahead of the planned partial flotation next year.

Kingspan’s share price, which have fallen by a third over the last four years, gained almost 7 per cent on Monday morning after the update.

[ Kingspan maintains profit guidance as sales grow to €6.8bnOpens in new window ]

The notice and the group’s big bet come at a particularly interesting time in the AI investment cycle. Fashionable though it has become to predict the impending explosion of the AI bubble, there has been little evidence of an imminent cataclysm. In the past week, however, the debate has reached fever pitch after Michael Burry – who famously predicted the US sub-prime mortgage market collapse – made a big bet against the AI boom and the companies benefiting from it.

Meanwhile, Sam Altman’s OpenAI has been in damage control mode in recent days after executives appeared to suggest publicly that it may need US government support to cover its infrastructure investment.

Kingspan will be hoping it’s all just background noise, rather than the opening strains of a popping sound that some believe is in the offing.

[ European shares fall as concerns over tech giants’ valuations continueOpens in new window ]