Derek Thompson

We've gone through the scale of the investment, the fact that investment is running way ahead of where revenue is right now, the fact that you're hopeful that revenue will continue to grow at a feverish pace to catch up to the spending, that from a stock value standpoint, these companies are very, very healthily priced at the very least, but also they're building something that has enormous demand, and finally, that it's requiring new exotic financing structures, but you consider

the structures to be more exotic than I think what you said, toxic or poisonous.

Tell me if you disagree with this incredibly simplistic, almost embarrassingly basic summary of your analysis.

If AI revenue grows 100% a year for the next five to 10 years, this is not a bubble.

If AI revenue can't grow 100% a year for the next two to three years,

We are looking at a situation where investors will reconsider whether these companies can afford to spend as much as they're spending in artificial intelligence.

And we might see a drawback that is broadly defined as the popping of a bubble.

To what extent is that missing something really, really significant here?

Because it doesn't touch on financing quality, which you just said is often very key to this.

But what does that summary miss?

Azim, I'm grateful that you walked me through your gauges.

The truth is,

I'm personally still very concerned that AI is a bubble.

And for me, the sticking points are probably two things.

Number one, I just don't think that incoming revenue will arrive on time to offset these investments.

It just seems too improbable that companies like OpenAI become 20, 50, $100 billion revenue gushers in the next few years, but something quite like that is necessary for them to justify current valuations.

And then that leads me, I guess, to number two, which is that I don't think these valuations are going to make sense in three years.

And when you add an investment correction, the fact that these companies are going to have to pull back their spending, to an asset value correction, the fact that OpenAI is not worth, say, half a trillion dollars, well, that's a bubble.

An investment correction and an asset value correction, that's a bubble.

So just humor me here for the end.