- No one has available tokens/gpus/datacenter for sale at any price
- No one will lend people money to build it
But the cost to add more power capacity is huge and highly variable. Just because oil is expensive today doesn’t mean the capex to pump more is justified.
Really what AI needs is large customers that will commit to large spend over the next 5-10 years. Without this AI companies are basically offering duration arbitrage of electricity. Not a good place to be; the finances will always look bad.
Unfortunately, the amount of capital required by the entire AI industry is enough that counterparty risk is now a concern.
Further more, their compute commitments are over 10-15 years. Their average quarterly compute commitment is only about $11B - $15B which they have already surpassed with their revenue.
At $230b/year, they’d be at around $57b in quarterly revenue against compute of around $16b. This is not bleeding cash.
Why do you say they're running out of cash?
If VC money gets tight, they would have to issue debt, that pay interests. With a current negative EBITDA, their bond will be junk at IPO, paying higher interests and having a lot less market than AAA debt (e.g. Google has access to that market). Both things combined translate to "running out of cash".
most recently (on both a quarterly and annual basis), it was negative
Let's say it's 15 years. That's $16B/quarter in commitment. They had $17B in revenue in Q3 2026.
If anything, they're far too conservative.
Everyone is using more and more tokens, everyone is complaining that providers lobotomize flag ship models because they don't have the capacity to serve everyone.
Then they turn around and compare it to the dark fiber bust or railways or whatever when in each of those the issue was the capacity being build that no one used.
It's been 2 years since I could buy a gpu for love or money. It's been one for ram.
My old rig is worth ~two~ three[0] times what I paid for it inflation adjusted.
[0] fuck me ram is rising again.
We just don't know the true value of tokens until those subsidies stop, and the subsidies don't stop because the respective companies don't want to know, at least until everyone cashed out. The valuations of AI companies are very difficult to reconcile with current revenue (which doesn't cover cost) and with a sober mind it's hard to imagine where all this additional revenue is going to come from, down the line. And that's not to say the the technology isn't fundamentally transformative and revolutionary. So was the internet, but it still created an investment bubble.
The RAM prices are in yet another pork cycle, which will be exacerbated by the fact that many previous pork cycles left RAM manufacturers with excess capacity and rock-bottom prices, so they're much more careful investing and more assertive negotiating contracts now.
The money is there but not at the risk levels these companies have pushed things to. They're spending billions like it's candy, and treating millions like change they found in their couch cushions.
Financial systems are usually in the hands of people that have some risk management. When these labs say things like this will change everything, there's no way to know how to evaluate any of this.
Coreweave doesnt seem to be in a winner-take-all sector, they have a narrow moat and will have high ongoing capex. I struggle to see how they dont go under eventually even with the ability to restructure debt
[Sept 2001] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-sep-27-fi-50296...
"Exodus Communications Inc., which never made a profit since it went public in March 1998, filed for bankruptcy protection after losing customers in the collapsing Internet economy."
"Exodus, which runs 44 Internet data centers on four continents, listed $5.98 billion in assets and $4.44 billion in debts in Chapter 11 papers filed Wednesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. The company operates so-called server farms that provide Web site services for businesses."
"The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company’s losses increased more than tenfold in the second quarter, and it fired workers as it failed to win new contracts fast enough to replace those it lost. Exodus counted Yahoo Inc. and AMR Corp.’s American Airlines among its customers."
"Trading in Exodus shares was halted before the markets opened Wednesday. The shares fell 33 cents to 17 cents Tuesday and have plunged 99% from a record $89.81 in March 2000."
"Analysts say Exodus, with eight different junk bond offerings totaling about $3.4 billion, ran up more debt than it could handle."
“We sacrificed profitability in exchange for growth and market share, over-expanding in some areas in advance of demand, not anticipating the decline as the dot-com bubble burst and the economy weakened,” Krause said.
"Exodus’ second-quarter loss grew on acquisition and restructuring costs to $583.4 million, or $1.05 a share, from $51.8 million, or 13 cents, a year earlier. Sales rose 79% to $318.7 million but missed analyst estimates. The company lost $256 million on sales of $818.4 million in 2000."
That's a great return for practically zero risk.
(If google defaults on bonds there's much bigger problems in the world than the loss of your capital)
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2017/06/24/i...
That being said, inflation is at 3.7% YoY and it's the real rate that maters, not the nominal one.
Yes, Google has a very small risk but still it is a non zero risk that google can bankrupt whereas US govt can physically not bankrupt itself given that it can print the money (there could only be some gridlock within raising the ceiling though but that's true)
Also I would argue that Google itself has changed with trillions of dollars spent into AI/Datacenters, it simply can't pivot as well. There is a reason as to why Google is having such high level of interest rate
Google isn't stupid and wants to give such high level of interests if not for the amount of risk involved. I dont believe that there's free lunch but also that perhaps this can be a good deal to some and this is gonna push people even more away from the more riskier neoclouds funding and cause their debts to rise in interests rate even more.
His point was that Microsoft has an interest in maximizing its credit worthiness which necessitated the corporate governance etc, while the administration had an interest in maximizing… other stuff (?) which did not necessitate the same things.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/why-microsoft-has-lowe...