Video: Opinion | A.I.’s ‘Circular Money Machine’ – The New York Times
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transcript
Well, that actually is a better segue to this next chart I was going to show you than I thought it would be, which is there’s some suspicions going around that this whole thing has become a kind of circular money machine, that the hunt for growth, the hunt for justifying share prices and investment and valuations is leading to just money constantly passing hands to create the almost appearance of activity. So, Joe, I’m going to show you this chart, which is a Bloomberg chart. It’s a Bloomberg chart. I recognize it from a distance. I know this chart from a distance. And it is extremely hard to parse, including for me, but —— You almost don’t need to parse — like, the point is almost not to parse it. -The point is to just get a —— -This chart is a vibe as much as it’s anything. It’s a vibe. -It’s a visual more than it’s just a —— -Gaze upon this incredible level of interlinkages. This, to me, is the most almost interesting chart to look at in A.I. -For those just listening, here we have — it’s a chart with Nvidia at the center. And basically everyone is invested in everyone else. So Nvidia invests in OpenAI, then has an investment in CoreWeave, which is one of these new cloud data center companies, and CoreWeave buys chips from Nvidia so the revenue gets recycled. So there’s two — So it’s basically everyone is linked to everyone else. -And, again —— -Bidirectionally, yes —— -And bidirectionally, it’s not like you pay someone and they pay someone else. It’s like you pay them. And they pay you. Yes, you invest in them and they invest in you. So I’m going to invest in you. And then not only are you going to buy chips from me, you’re going to make an equity investment. So, obviously, there is the web of complexity, which I think we associate with 2007, 2008, which is just like the sheer incredible number of just, the sheer volume of the web of relationships and so forth. And part of just like how hard that is to decipher. But then there’s the other element that — go back to the dot-com bubble. And if you looked at a lot of the companies that were riding high on the dot-com bubble, they had real revenue. The poster child for this was Yahoo.com or Cisco. So you have these companies that say, OK, maybe they’re a little rich on the stock market. But look, we know they’re real businesses. The issue is that underneath these real businesses, there was a lot of financialization going on. By that, I mean specifically, there was a host of startups and they were raising money on I.P.O.s. And then that I.P.O. money that they raised would immediately be put into either ads on Yahoo or purchases of Cisco equipment. And when the I.P.O. market closed down, when there was a little bit of risk off appetite in the stock market, and suddenly then therefore the revenue collapsed at those giants. And so, yes. Well, what looked like sustainable, healthy businesses were actually really being funded by financial markets. And I think that the concern when you look at the A.I. boom is you have all these companies doing very well. Nvidia is absolutely a real business. It absolutely has real revenue. It absolutely has real profits. No one is denying it. Is there some richness in the valuation? Sure, maybe. I don’t know, but very plausibly. There are real businesses. And so I think that the issue — when we talk about a bubble in the A.I., sure, there may be rich valuations, but the fear would be that the actual revenue that these are not sustainable revenues and therefore not sustainable profits.
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This article was autogenerated from a news feed from CDO TIMES selected high quality news and research sources. There was no editorial review conducted beyond that by CDO TIMES staff. Need help with any of the topics in our articles? Schedule your free CDO TIMES Tech Navigator call today to stay ahead of the curve and gain insider advantages to propel your business!
transcript
Well, that actually is a better segue to this next chart I was going to show you than I thought it would be, which is there’s some suspicions going around that this whole thing has become a kind of circular money machine, that the hunt for growth, the hunt for justifying share prices and investment and valuations is leading to just money constantly passing hands to create the almost appearance of activity. So, Joe, I’m going to show you this chart, which is a Bloomberg chart. It’s a Bloomberg chart. I recognize it from a distance. I know this chart from a distance. And it is extremely hard to parse, including for me, but —— You almost don’t need to parse — like, the point is almost not to parse it. -The point is to just get a —— -This chart is a vibe as much as it’s anything. It’s a vibe. -It’s a visual more than it’s just a —— -Gaze upon this incredible level of interlinkages. This, to me, is the most almost interesting chart to look at in A.I. -For those just listening, here we have — it’s a chart with Nvidia at the center. And basically everyone is invested in everyone else. So Nvidia invests in OpenAI, then has an investment in CoreWeave, which is one of these new cloud data center companies, and CoreWeave buys chips from Nvidia so the revenue gets recycled. So there’s two — So it’s basically everyone is linked to everyone else. -And, again —— -Bidirectionally, yes —— -And bidirectionally, it’s not like you pay someone and they pay someone else. It’s like you pay them. And they pay you. Yes, you invest in them and they invest in you. So I’m going to invest in you. And then not only are you going to buy chips from me, you’re going to make an equity investment. So, obviously, there is the web of complexity, which I think we associate with 2007, 2008, which is just like the sheer incredible number of just, the sheer volume of the web of relationships and so forth. And part of just like how hard that is to decipher. But then there’s the other element that — go back to the dot-com bubble. And if you looked at a lot of the companies that were riding high on the dot-com bubble, they had real revenue. The poster child for this was Yahoo.com or Cisco. So you have these companies that say, OK, maybe they’re a little rich on the stock market. But look, we know they’re real businesses. The issue is that underneath these real businesses, there was a lot of financialization going on. By that, I mean specifically, there was a host of startups and they were raising money on I.P.O.s. And then that I.P.O. money that they raised would immediately be put into either ads on Yahoo or purchases of Cisco equipment. And when the I.P.O. market closed down, when there was a little bit of risk off appetite in the stock market, and suddenly then therefore the revenue collapsed at those giants. And so, yes. Well, what looked like sustainable, healthy businesses were actually really being funded by financial markets. And I think that the concern when you look at the A.I. boom is you have all these companies doing very well. Nvidia is absolutely a real business. It absolutely has real revenue. It absolutely has real profits. No one is denying it. Is there some richness in the valuation? Sure, maybe. I don’t know, but very plausibly. There are real businesses. And so I think that the issue — when we talk about a bubble in the A.I., sure, there may be rich valuations, but the fear would be that the actual revenue that these are not sustainable revenues and therefore not sustainable profits.
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Latest Video
Visual Investigations
Diary of a Song
Magazine
T Magazine
Op-Docs
Opinion
Middle East Crisis
Advertisement
source
This article was autogenerated from a news feed from CDO TIMES selected high quality news and research sources. There was no editorial review conducted beyond that by CDO TIMES staff. Need help with any of the topics in our articles? Schedule your free CDO TIMES Tech Navigator call today to stay ahead of the curve and gain insider advantages to propel your business!
