Over the weekend, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk issued a stark warning: investing in AI cloud computing companies is ill-advised and could result in “guppy-level death and consolidation.”
Analysts have been raising concerns that leading hyperscaler CoreWeave could soon collapse under its own weight, pointing out that it’s taken on over $50 billion in debt, while burning through cash at an alarming rate.
It’s a familiar line of thinking as fears of the AI bubble bursting continue to haunt investors, a potentially doomsday-level economic event that could send ripples across the entire global economy.
And despite the enormous amounts of money that keep being poured in, an actual return on investments remains a distant dream. One major reality check, as Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Slok argued in a note over the weekend: outside of the tech industry, AI has yet to deliver on any meaningful economic advantages for businesses — amounting to what he called “zero financial payoff.”
“Revenue per worker is rising for the Mag 7 but is flat for the S&P 493,” he wrote. “Profit margins are rising for the Mag 7 but are flat for the S&P 493,” adding that “there are still no signs of AI boosting productivity growth.”
It’s the latest vote of no confidence as fears of a colossal money pit caving in on itself continue to grow. Much of corporate America has struggled to see much in the way of the promised benefits that are directly reflected on their balance sheets.
“The bottom line is that the AI story will be decided in the S&P 493, not the Mag 7, and so far, there is no evidence that revenue growth or margins are improving outside the tech sector,” Slok concluded.
Worse yet, the costs to make use of frontier models have soared, forcing companies to switch to cheaper solutions. Besides, whether firms can actually benefit from highly sophisticated tech that can identify cybersecurity threats with ease or autonomously hack a third party’s servers remains a glaring question.
“Mainstream corporate America is pulling back and starting to view token spending not as a source of growth but as a cost center that weighs on margins,” Slok wrote.
Despite having just announced a half a billion dollar AI push, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon told investors last week that “there’s very little that we do where we need frontier models,” as Fortune reports.
The “bigger-picture frontier issues that are getting a lot of attention” are “really separate from using the base tools that exist to support your businesses,” Solomon argued.
Meanwhile, the AI industry is being majorly tested this week, with Anthropic officially filing to go public. But the fact that it blew through a staggering $80.7 billion in just the first half of this year could exacerbate fears as business leaders ponder whether the juice really is worth the squeeze.
More on the AI industry: IMF Warns That AI Bubble Could Take Down the Entire World Economy
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