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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Greetings and salutations. I am Ed Zitrom, and this is Better Off Lime, and your Better Off Lime monologue. Been a funny week for me. Went on Bloomberg, did an interview cleanly covering the highlights of my AI bubble thesis. Didn't say fuck, shit, or bugger even once. A bunch of people loved it. Now everybody is, for some reason, mysteriously talking about the lack of return of investment on AI.
That's because everything I said has come true. Back in September 2024, I talked about the subprime AI crisis and said that when companies adopting LLM-based services were forced to pay the actual real cost of tokens, they'd start to freak the fuck out. Now, clammy old Clamantha, clammy Sam Altman himself has added an unfortunate comment to the mix.
Purpose, this insider, Ormond said at a recent event that ROI had now become a meme, quoting somebody saying, my company spent my entire 2026 budget in Q1, can you make this more efficient? Adding that the company was, and OpenAI in this case, I mean, was exploring other ways to deliver more value for less spend.
I love how casual he says this too, just like, yeah, you know, just people are blowing their entire yearly budgets in a few months, but you didn't It's fine. He also said that at the beginning of 2026, the issue of spend never came up and people were totally happy with the amount they were spending. But now AI costs were, and I quote, a huge issue.
Well, that's probably because OpenAI and Anthropic moved their enterprise customers from heavily subsidized monthly subscriptions to token-based billing in Q1 2026. Hmm. I wonder if it's that. It could be. I guess it could be that.
But put differently, nobody actually paid what AI actually really cost, and now they're having to, and they're screaming like they stepped on a mousetrap like Tom and Jerry. They're freaking the fuck out. Journalists are freaking out too.
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Chapter 2: What is the main concern regarding AI's return on investment?
To make matters worse, earlier in the week, Sam Altman talked to CNBC's David Faber on the subject. When asked about these spending problems, he said that he assumed that the industry will figure that out pretty quickly. Samuel, Credenza, Methuselah, Formaldehyde, Altman, you just raised 120 billion fucking dollars. You are the AI industry. You are the one that's meant to work this out.
That's your job. You can't be four years into this no IT loads refused cash dump and still shrugging your shoulders like the Kevin James meme and saying, I'm just a little guy. I can't do everything. I'm a birthday boy. I'm a little birthday boy. Give me $100 billion because it's my birthday. You cannot do that, Sam Altman. You can't do that. That's crazy, man.
And it's very clear that OpenAI is, to quote Drill, cooked on the pit Memphis style. The Q1 2026 non-gap operating margin was negative 122%. They lose billions and billions and billions of dollars a year, and Chad GPT's growth has stalled at around 905 million weekly active users. We are approaching the end of this farce, and these companies cannot afford to slow down a little.
Even a little, not a touch. And as Goldman Sachs' Jim Covello said in a recent podcast ā and I love this quote because it's, Jim is very smart and he's been ahead of this, but it's so simple ā At some point, you've got to make money as you make investments in a business so you can generate returns. People are just quoting that like, damn, brother. Shit, why didn't I think of that?
Hey, you invest money in it. I thought you just invested money in businesses because it felt good, because it made you feel good inside. It made you feel warm and fuzzy. I didn't know. What do you mean a return on investment? What do you mean?
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Chapter 3: How are companies reacting to rising AI costs?
You're talking about I put money in this for a reason. You're crazy. Jim Cabello, you're so crazy. But four years in, companies are spending more than ever on a product without a clear return on investment. It's obvious at this point. However many use cases the mildly mold-poisoned people in AI are dancing around about, no one can seem to actually, like, say what it means or...
why it matters, or indeed, even if all of these people claim they're writing all their code with AI, what that actually changes. Doesn't make the software better. Oh, I'm so close to Tucker Carlson voice. Doesn't make the software better. Doesn't seem to make anything better. It just seems to make our apps worse.
But folks, we're reaching the end of this era, and I'm currently working on a massive story, bigger than both of my huge exclusives from last year, and one you will not want to miss. I am really excited about this. Technically, there's two, but I know one's going to come in. One's pretty big. One's ginormous. But before then, I'm taking a week off. I'm getting my wisdom teeth out.
I do need a break. So I'm going to rest up. You should rest up too. And keep on laughing at these oafs burning billions of dollars on software that doesn't have a return on investment. Zitron out.
Number one hits, millions of records sold, awards, sold out tours. You think the Jonas Brothers are satisfied? Nope. It's podcast time. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Hey Jonas is available now and their first guest is a big one, Paul Rudd. You know, Steve Carell is a great singer.
Can you tell you not to audition at The Office or something? I told him. Whoa. We were filming Anchorman. Clearly, I was the idiot. Thank God he didn't listen to me, right? Listen to Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.
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