In the last week, we’ve had no less than three different pieces asking whether the massive proliferation of data centers is a massive bubble, and though they, at times, seem to take the default position of AI’s inevitable value, they’ve begun to sour on the idea that
This is a little misleading, because obviously FAANG (and others) are all building AI systems, and are all profitable. There are also tons of companies applying machine learning to various areas that are doing well from a profitability standpoint (mostly B2B SaaS that are enhancing extant tools). This statement is really only true for the glut of “AI companies” that do nothing but produce LLMs to plug into stuff.
My personal take is that this is just revealing how disconnected from the tech industry VCs are, who are the ones buying into this hype and burning billions of dollars on (as you said) smoke and mirrors companies like Anthropic and OpenAI.
The thing is, companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft are already profitable, so it could lose them huge amounts of money, with no real meaningful benefit to user retention or B2B sales, but the companies as a whole would still be profitable. It could be a huge money black hole, but they continue to chase it out of unjustified FOMO and in an attempt to keep share prices high through misplaced investor confidence.
Apple’s share price has taken a pretty big hit from the perception that they’re “falling behind” on AI, even if they’ve mostly just backed away from it because users didn’t like it when it was shoved in their face. Other companies are probably looking at that and saying “hey, we’d rather keep the stock market happy and our share prices high rather than stop wasting money on this”.
I should reframe what I said: there is not a single profitable AI-focused company. There are tons of already profitable companies that are now deeply embedding AI into everything they do.
The fang companies that are in on the llm hype are still lighting money on fire in their llm endeavors so I fail to see how the point that they may be otherwise profitable is relevant.
This is an interesting take in that only doing one thing but doing it well has been, historically, how businesses thrived. This vertical integration thing and startups looking to be bought out instead of trying to make it on their own (obviously, VCs play a role in this) has led to jacks of all trades.