I'm old enough to remember when vendor financing was both de rigueur and also frowned upon... (1990s: telecom sector, with all big players like Lucent, Nortel, Cisco, indulging in it, ending with the bust of 2001/2002, of course)

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alephnerd 4 days ago | parent [-]

This absolutely feels like the Telco Bubble 2.0, and I've mentioned this on HN as well a couple times [0]

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44069086

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boringg 4 days ago | parent [-]

For sure a great infrastructure build out -- lets hope the leftover are better energy infrastructure so that whatever comes next in 7 years after the flame out has some great stuff to build on (similar to telco bubble 1.0) and less damaging to planet earth in the long arc.

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alephnerd 4 days ago | parent [-]

Yep. The Telco Bust 1.0 along with the Dotcom Bust is what enabled the cloud computing boom, the SaaS boom, and the e-commerce boom by the early-mid 2010s.

I think the eventual AI bust will lead to the same thing, as the costs for developing a domain-specific model have cratered over the past couple years.

AI/ML (and the infra around it) is overvalued at their current multiples, but the value created it real, and as the market grows to understand the limitations but also the opportunities, a more realistic and permanent boo' will occur.

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aanet 4 days ago | parent [-]

Yeah - no doubt on the eventual productivity gains due to AI/ML (which are real, of course, just like the real gains due to telecom infra buildup), but must an economy go through a bubble first to realize these productivity gains??

It appears that the answer is "more likely yes than not".

Counting some examples:

- self driving / autonomous vehicles (seeing real deployments now with Waymo, but 99% deployment still ahead; meanwhile, $$$ billions of value destroyed in the last 10-15 years with so many startups running out of money, getting acquihired, etc)

- Humanoid robots... (potential bubble?? I don't know of a single commercial deployment today that is worth any solid revenues, but companies keep getting funded left / right)

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Deegy 4 days ago | parent [-]

Happened with the electrical grid too.

I think you make a very interesting observation about these bubbles potentially being an inherent part of new technology expansion.

It makes sense too from a human behavior perspective. Whenever there are massive wins to be had, speculation will run rampant. Everyone wants to be the winner, but only a small fraction will actually win.

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