Jersey Mike’s IPO illustrates how bad the AI hype has become; plus, Mark Zuckerberg said AI agents haven’t progressed as quickly as he’d hoped
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What is the opening overview of the episode and why does AI hype matter?
This is TechCrunch.
Hey there, I'm Travis Hoyam, one of the hosts of Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. Each weekday on Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing, we talk through the business news you need to know and the stories moving stocks on Wall Street. On weekends, we game plan personal finance strategies and dive into the industry's shaping tomorrow, and host the experts, authors, and executives that understand them. Tune in for insights and a long-term perspective on investing and of course stock ideas, plenty of them. To quote a listener, it pays to listen. Check us out and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
It's hard to tell the exact tipping point from realistic excitement over a new technology to hype to aw, come on. But
Why does Jersey Mike’s S‑1 mention AI 22 times even though it sells sandwiches?
You know, when a sandwich shop with Danny DeVito as its public face talks about AI in its IPO documents, We must be getting pretty close. And so it is with Jersey Mics. Because of investor thirst for all things AI these days, it's easy to understand why tech companies feel the need to, you know, sprinkle some AI dust all over their pitches. This is as true for non AI startups raising venture capital as it is for, say, Bending Spoon's public debut, a company in the business of buying aging not AI tech companies to rehabilitate. Yeah. If you take a look at Jersey Mike's IPO documents to see maybe how far this compulsion has gone, surely a sandwich shop would have no need to mention AI and its S1, right?
Uh lo and behold, the term artificial intelligence and its acronym AI were mentioned twenty-two times. In this case, the company can't claim to be selling AI software.
How does Jersey Mike’s IPO use AI risk warnings and what does that reveal about investor pressure?
It sells sub sandwiches. AI products are what investors are really hungering for though. Terrible pun, definitely intended. Still, the company found a way to mention AI in its investor risk warnings. That may be even funnier. It doesn't explain what it's using AI for that could be dangerous to investors beyond a hand wave of a phrase, we are beginning to use AI technologies in our business. In all fairness, as a company that operates franchisees, it does rely on software, mentioned fifty two times, and data one hundred and twelve mentions, as all businesses do. Its AI risk warning was boilerplate copy, perhaps even necessary, as such disasters have already happened to other food businesses, like the half baked AI inventory tool that Starbucks rolled out, which could not count, and was recently scrapped.
Still, predicting that the risk of an AI disaster for a company that produces real life sandwiches, not AI slop, is about the same as, you know, say a franchise shop getting hit by lightning.
What did Mark Zuckerberg say about the slower‑than‑expected progress of Meta’s AI agents?
That actually happened, by the way, to a shop in Texas back in 2021. Yet weather was only mentioned five times in the S1. And lightning? Not once. Well, replacing people with AI does not seem to be that easy to do, if meta can be seen as an example. Reuters reported that at an internal town hall on Thursday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told staff that the pace of AI agent development had not accelerated in the way executives had previously expected them to. Earlier this year, Meta laid off about 8,000 employees, approximately ten percent of its corporate workforce, and reassigned another seven thousand to various AI groups, including one called Agent Transformation. During this week's meeting Zuckerberg apparently commented on these job cuts, noting that they were not as clean as they should have been.
How is Meta planning to turn its massive AI investment into tangible results over the next few months?
The cuts were made because top officials at the company were worried that we weren't going to move fast enough to adapt to the changing landscape of the tech industry, Zuckerberg reportedly added. Now, the corporate leader also apparently said that the perceived upside of the new AI-focused company structure had not come to fruition yet, although he said that he believed the company would begin to see improvements from its AI investments during the next three to six months. Several other investigative reports have depicted Meta's months-old AI unit as a soul crushing ghoulup. bulog, according to some of the engineers assigned to it.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the opening overview of the episode and why does AI hype matter?
0:02–0:53
2
Why does Jersey Mike’s S‑1 mention AI 22 times even though it sells sandwiches?
0:53–1:57
3
How does Jersey Mike’s IPO use AI risk warnings and what does that reveal about investor pressure?
1:57–3:07
4
What did Mark Zuckerberg say about the slower‑than‑expected progress of Meta’s AI agents?
3:07–4:05
5
How is Meta planning to turn its massive AI investment into tangible results over the next few months?
4:05–5:03
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from TechCrunch Industry News
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