Early investors make money when later investors buy them out at inflated valuations.

Well sure, all market signals should be considered. As a casual observer, my received signals have been indicating that AI is getting sold at a loss to get market share, and more recent signals have indicated that users are really really sensitive to both costs and performance.

The weakest signal to me is investor money, because when you think of it, investors are betting on a future that may or may not be there. Heck even trends aren't guaranteed, "past performance is no guarantee etc etc"

Have you seen the business models for these companies? Literal underpants gnome memes. OpenAI's goes like this:

1. Build AGI

2. Use said AGI to tell us how to become profitable

3. Profit!

Anthropic seems to be going all in on enterprise sales. Which means they don't actually have to please customers, or it's what ThePrimeagen humorously calls a "yacht problem"—a problem that only needs a solution after the IPO. For now all they have to do is convince corporate leadership that this is the future of work and sow enough FOMO to close those sales contracts and their projected sales, and stock valuation, goes through the roof.

Of course that value will collapse if they go without delivering on their promises long enough. That's why they call it a bubble. But by then, hopefully, Dario and the early investors will be long gone and even richer than they were to start. Their only competitor, OpenAI, is confronted with the same issues: the scalability problems won't go away, and addressing them doesn't drive stock valuation the way promising high rollers that AGI and total workforce automation are just around the corner does.