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AI boom adds more than half a trillion dollars to wealth of US tech barons in 2025
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2025
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I wonder what it's like being an investor in one of these companies. You're watching them shovel mountains of money into the AI furnace, with literally no profit to show for it, but the stock keeps going up. What's your "get out before the whole thing collapses" number? I mean, there must be some voice at the back of your mind going, "This is unsustainable."
Tech bros and their sycophants have started saying things like "the old rules don't apply anymore." That also happened in 2007-2008. That also happened just before the dotcom bubble burst. That happens before every pie-in-the-sky idea that takes over the economy but has no actual plan for profitability finally burns out.
So what's your get-out number, investor guys?
There is no get out number. That's the whole point.
This is not an investment. It's a bet on a company not finishing the race dead last. There has never been a push for AI and androids like this. Never. The bets will keep happening until there is a winner.
Right now China is winning because all the chips used for betting are made in China from rare earth metals. The actual stuff that keeps modern society functional. Not stock market speculation.
I don't think that all of them are looking to get out, I think that a lot of people are just dumb enough to expect unbounded growth.
Look at the Tesla money they are so desperate to throw at Musk.
The AI investor pitch is one of existential risk. "This industry will eventually erase every other. Every investment you have will be made worthless by this one technology."
The way the average investor sees it, when you have a pitch like that, it becomes irrational not to invest. If you're even 10% sure they're right, you have to hedge.
Unless you know your history and recognize that every single time one of these fantasies takes over the economy, the failure to actually, y'know, be a profitable business ultimately dooms it.
It is also the pitch of every grifter that has ever walked god's green earth.
I am not a professional, but after one more bull cycle I am out.
If you look at major hardware vendors that support AI like Dell, HPe, NetApp, Cisco, etc. They've been more or less flat since August. That also includes NVIDIA. Up and down but not actually blowing up, even though they are all the horsepower behind the cloud/AI. I saw that as the ominous sign that we've peaked