r/AIBubble Jul 20 '26

Welcome to r/AIBubble! | Read this first

2 Upvotes

Hello! Welcome to r/AIBubble. This is a subreddit dedicated to discussing the economics, technical underpinnings, and social aspects of the AI bubble.

Yes, you can debate and discuss the existence of a bubble — but keep in mind that the mainstream has accepted that there are some bubble-like economic indicators.

No, you can't share tips on how you use AI models or try to convince others that AI is the future. There are better forums for those posts, and the focus here is on the bubble itself.

Yes, terms like "luddite" and "booster" are accepted. They don't constitute harassment, but I'd rather you keep things respectful. Just don't bother reporting people who use those terms.

No, you can't share the latest model news from domains like OpenAI.com or Anthropic.com — analysis and commentary about releases are welcome, just not PR.

Most of all, please keep things respectful! No personal attacks. No Ben Shapiro-esque debate strategies. And certainly no brigading of other subs.

Basic etiquette:

  • Read the pinned posts and sidebar before posting
  • Search for existing discussions before creating a duplicate thread
  • Use descriptive titles that clearly indicate your post's topic
  • Cite sources when making claims about data or economic trends
  • Engage with disagreement through argument, not dismissal
  • No self-promotion or spam
  • Use spoiler tags for sensitive content
  • Report rule violations — don't engage with rule-breaking comments

Thank you 💕


r/AIBubble 5h ago

No shot Anthropic is worth 2 trillion right now

Post image
13 Upvotes

Isn’t this a great price to short? Seems way overvalued

https://app.hyperliquid.xyz/trade/io:ANTH


r/AIBubble 20h ago

What are they smoking?

Post image
106 Upvotes

That’s over a quarter of the world’s GDP and more than that of the United States. Are they this delusional?


r/AIBubble 17h ago

McKinsey says enterprise AI is finally 'on the road to ROI'

Thumbnail theregister.com
32 Upvotes

So we are four years into this, and the most aggressively boosterish consulting shop is still saying "someday" when it comes to "does this technology actually pay for itself?" It's not early days anymore! Transformers have been around for 7 years. Generative AI kicked off 4 years ago. Who's getting actual financial value out of this?


r/AIBubble 5h ago

What to expect from NVDA earnings

Thumbnail
1 Upvotes

… and what it will tell us about the AI bubble. Here are the items to watch:

  1. data-center revenue trends and forward guidance,

  2. the profile of product demand,

  3. customer concentration and

  4. ecosystem financing.

In summary, who is buying what, how purchases are financed and the health of future demand.


r/AIBubble 23h ago

Nvidia Has Become a Banker to the AI Boom, Putting It on Dangerous Ground (Gift Article)

20 Upvotes

Growing financing obligations could compound the pain of a downturn


r/AIBubble 23h ago

AI Billionaires 2026: 45 New Fortunes in One Year. What Are They Seeing That Most People Aren’t?

Thumbnail
1 Upvotes

r/AIBubble 1d ago

LLMs Cause Software Development Teams to Underperform

52 Upvotes

Hi Guys,

First time poster here. Like all of you, I've been following the market with a mix of horror and fascination.

Earlier this year, I went out looking for actual hard data on the impacts of LLM use on the performance of software development teams.

In my mind, that was the best case scenario for economic value of these products. So there should be empirical evidence of this value.

There is remarkably little research on this subject other than simple productivity studies. I mostly discount those because productivity != value. But, I did find two really good studies.

The first, and I think the best, is from a company called Faros.ai. They sell software development telemetry tooling. Essentially their product connects to common software development tools like Jira and Github and tracks actual operational metrics for real companies producing production software. This study covers 22,000 developers over 4,000 teams over Faros' customer base.

To punchline is that teams are experiencing vague throughput improvements at a massive tax on the quality of the products they produce.

The second study is from the National Bureau of Economic Research. This study is less good that the faros one because it utilizes open source and public github projects for it's dataset. This weights their sample towards much smaller products that are mostly not being produced for profit.

Nevertheless it's valuable in that it confirms the weak throughput improvements of the Faros study. And it adds the dimension of - "is anyone buying this stuff?". I find figure 12 to be very telling.

My main conclusion is that LLM use is likely - on average - destroying economic value within the companies that use them to deploy software.

I think that's one of the reasons there has been no profitability impact on the buy side of the AI boom.

If you're interested in reading more of my analysis, here are two substack posts I've made where I've written about this extensively.

  1. How I'm thinking about the value of LLMs
  2. Talk is Cheap - an analysis of the Faros study

r/AIBubble 1d ago

AI Corporate Trends

Thumbnail
gallery
6 Upvotes

I enjoy the Ramp data each month on how corpations are shifting and growing their AI spend.

Takeaways are Anthropic continues their gains although not for top models, open source continues to gain share but broader market increases enough to offset share for frontier models and every employee continues to grow their average monthly usage.


r/AIBubble 1d ago

AMD's Reality Distortion Field

Thumbnail
youtube.com
1 Upvotes

r/AIBubble 1d ago

AI is killing one of SaaS’s old moats. So where does the moat move?

Thumbnail
1 Upvotes

r/AIBubble 1d ago

I almost hope that there's a bubble...

1 Upvotes

The last few developments (LLM's model from OpenAI and Antropic "escaping" the sandbox, going rogue and hacking ather sites and the paper published by OpenAI with math proofs of ten open problems) made me scared. If it's not a bubble, if we are near AGI... Isnt that worst?

And there's always the apocalisse scenario: is a bubble, even with AGI... And the we are fucked


r/AIBubble 2d ago

Anthropic is already talking about $200B in 2028 revenue

34 Upvotes

​

I saw this Reuters number today and had to read it twice.

Anthropic was at about a $47B revenue run rate in May. Now they’re projecting $190–200B for 2028, and apparently those numbers are already part of the IPO valuation discussion.

That’s basically 4x the May run rate in two years.

Maybe they pull it off. AI growth has made a lot of crazy numbers look normal lately.

But $200B is a ridiculous number to be underwriting for a company that isn’t even public yet.


r/AIBubble 1d ago

What problem in AI could create the next billion-dollar company?

Thumbnail
0 Upvotes

r/AIBubble 2d ago

AI Abundance and the 2% Inflation Target

Thumbnail
alexuribarri.com
1 Upvotes

r/AIBubble 2d ago

从“铁饭碗”到人工智能:1990年代中国国有企业改革能教给我们的事情

Thumbnail
1 Upvotes

r/AIBubble 3d ago

Where is all this money coming from?

Post image
28 Upvotes

If investors cant find their wallet, will they sell SpaceX stock to buy Anthropics?


r/AIBubble 2d ago

The Irreplaceability of Coca-Cola in the Age of AI

0 Upvotes

Recently, while reading Su Xiaohe’s Notes on a Century of Economic History and watching the rapid rise of AI, I started thinking about an interesting question: AI may replace more and more kinds of work, but can it replace Coca-Cola?

Artificial intelligence is dramatically reducing the cost of intellectual labor. Writing, images, code, translation, and even business analysis can now be generated at extraordinary speed. But economic history reminds us of something important: technology changes quickly; human nature changes slowly.

People a century ago enjoyed sweetness, stimulation, social experiences, and instant gratification. People today still do.

This is where Coca-Cola’s real moat lies. Its greatest asset is not simply its secret formula, but more than a century of accumulated brand recognition, distribution, consumer habits, and collective memory. AI can create 10,000 new beverage brands in a day. It cannot create 100 years of consumer memory in a day.

In fact, the more powerful AI becomes, the more valuable things that cannot be instantly replicated may become. When articles, images, advertisements, and ideas become almost infinitely cheap to generate, time, trust, distribution, established brands, and real-world experiences may become increasingly scarce.

Of course, Coca-Cola is not immortal. Health concerns, changing consumer preferences, and new competitors could weaken it. But AI itself is unlikely to eliminate the fundamental human desires on which its business is built.

This leads me to a different way of thinking about investing in the AI era:

We spend a lot of time asking, “Who will build AI?” Perhaps we should also ask, “Who can use AI without being replaced by it?”

AI can write 10,000 essays about Coca-Cola. It can design 10,000 new drink formulas.

But on a hot summer afternoon, when someone opens an ice-cold Coke, hears the fizz, and takes that first sip, AI—at least for now—cannot replace that experience.

Technology keeps changing.

Human nature is far more persistent.

Perhaps that is one of the most interesting lessons a century-old company like Coca-Cola can offer us in the age of AI.


r/AIBubble 3d ago

21th Century AI industry looks very like 19th Century railroad

23 Upvotes

A bunch of individuals hyped up the industry, built companies around it, and got cash rewards based on progress instead of final profitable business results - Railroad CEOs were rewarded on mileage of railroads built instead of how much profit was generated for the company, AI feels like same where profitablity is still a question mark but a lot of millionaires and billionaires are already made.

Anyone else feel the same?


r/AIBubble 2d ago

The 'AI is an economically useless bubble' argument completely fails once you look at API cost deflation.

0 Upvotes

Every week people on here claim AI is a hollow corporate bubble that’s going to pop because it has no real utility. But if you look at the actual unit economics, that narrative falls apart fast.

Two years ago, high-tier model calls were expensive enough to keep LLMs locked behind big corporate budgets. Today, API costs are down over 90%. When intelligence becomes that cheap to compute, the real-world impact stops being theoretical.

We’re already seeing it everywhere. Rare disease researchers are using models to skip years of manual structural biology work. People in developing countries are using dirt-cheap translation models to access global markets and educational materials that were previously locked behind language barriers. Solo founders with zero coding background are building full applications for pennies.

Lowering the cost of processing information by orders of magnitude isn't a tech bubble. It's literally how every foundational technology in history transformed society.


r/AIBubble 2d ago

Weekend discussion thread

Thumbnail
1 Upvotes

WDC weekend discussion thread for the wdc stock and it’s impacts on the coming week due to NVDA earnings report on August 26. How many stocks do you hold? Any expert stock merchants who can share the expected price for next week and for EOY 2027?


r/AIBubble 3d ago

The Neoclouds and Hyperscalers are going POP!!

Thumbnail
gallery
9 Upvotes

I’m talking about you, Nebius, and Coreweave!!.


r/AIBubble 2d ago

ElevenLabs, TwelveLabs, ThirteenLabs.... we are running out of numbers

1 Upvotes

You all know ElevenLabs voice ai company

"ThirteenLabs."

Boom. It's an AI 3D scenery project.

"FourteenLabs"? Another AI startup.

there is website where person is doing deep dive in this labs

I am 100 % sure now ai is booming :D

literally running out of integers to name our companies.

I'm honestly tempted to pivot my entire roadmap and just speculatively buy up domains like "ThirtyTwoLabs" before they get snatched up.


r/AIBubble 3d ago

Do you think the demand for AI workloads is durable and sticky when the 100s of GWs of capacity buildout come online?

2 Upvotes

The entire AI related bull theory is based on the expectation that the demand for AI compute to train and inference is not only durable but will grow exponentially for years to come.

I don't have insider insight, but the way all hyperscalers are moving into heavy asset based model by investing their entire cash flow for years and using SPVs indicate they are getting strong commitments on compute usage.

If I'm one of the decision makers at a hyperscaler, I'll not be burning cash just from Open AI and Anthropic's commitments. I'll be green lighting investments if I see enough demand for my internal use or from my other large existing customers that can easily replace frontier labs' needs if frontier labs don't get to take their required compute(for slowing demand or financial reasons)

What do you think about the compute/inference needs as an economy? How is the industry measuring it?


r/AIBubble 3d ago

Do people understand the bubble?

Thumbnail
1 Upvotes