Premium: Notes From The Bubble, Volume 1
Ed Zitron argues that major hyperscalers (Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon) have run out of genuine innovation and are propping up valuations through massive AI capex spending that will never generate sufficient returns. He contends that LLMs are a flawed interface bolted onto existing products, that none of these companies are building truly new platforms, and that Meta is the most vulnerable hyperscaler due to its near-total dependence on advertising revenue. The AI bubble, he predicts, will burst not with a bang but through a slow capex pullback — first signaled by a semiconductor firm filing or canceled order — triggering brutal stock drops and leaving the tech industry with nothing meaningful to look forward to afterward, unlike the post-Dot-Com era which had Google, AWS, and PayPal in the pipeline.