Yeah, there has to be a bubble for it to burst. There doesn't seem to be one yet.

But no AI provider is actually making money. They are being pumped money by investors hoping for a return. There are no returns. It's a bubble?

I guess I’d be pretty confused on how to not classify it as a bubble.

The level of investment and operating costs of AI firms is just so high that the question of where the customer spend comes from to make it profitable eventually comes into play.

The other obvious question is how AI firms maintain their bookings and overall value when the upper middle class responsible for the majority of consumption dollars is getting laid off left and right by AI.

E.g., OpenAI finally ships AGI and realizes their investment value and goes from unprofitable to profitable. They can charge companies thousands per month for their best models/tooling because they replace employees entirely.

All the big corporate customers of the world are happy: truck drivers are replaced by self-driving, big high-income employee bases like Meta, JPMorgan, law firms slash employee counts by huge amounts like 50% or maybe even more.

…and as soon as that happens all those same companies face massive customer attrition since all those high-earners were just laid off and aren’t buying PlayStations and KitchenAid stand mixers anymore.