Nah, "selling shovels" is mostly a metaphor, the amount of iron that went into mining equipment was insignificant, beyond some local demand peaks. The majority of the business was consumables.

A key thing to understand about the gold rush is that it was not a major economic event, or at least nowhere near as big as the participants thought it would be, hence the tradegy.

The AI gold rush is different in that there actually is a mountain of "shovels" large enough to flood the global market quite severely.

Railway tycoons were the real beneficiaries, and the Gold Rush led to broader organic economic development in the West, so railways remained relevant.

Not sure what that means for the metaphor, but there you go.