No one knows if AI is a bubble, but it is totally bonkers - The Washington Post

9 views

Skip to first unread message

Key Wu

unread,

Nov 8, 2025, 12:32:43 PM (17 hours ago) Nov 8

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/11/07/ai-bubble-spending/

No one knows if AI is a bubble, but it is totally bonkers - The Washington Post
Maybe you’ve heard that artificial intelligence is a bubble poised to burst. Maybe you have heard that it isn’t. (No one really knows either way, but that won’t stop the bros from jabbering about it constantly.)
But I can confidently tell you that the money being thrown around for AI is so huge that numbers have lost all meaning. The companies pouring money in are so rich and so power-hungry (in multiple meanings of that term) that our puny human brains cannot really comprehend.
So let’s try to give some meaning and context to the stratospheric numbers in AI. Is it a bubble? Eh, who knows. But it is completely bonkers.

• In just the past year, the four richest companies developing AI — Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta — have spent roughly $360 billion combined for big-ticket projects, which included building AI data centers and stuffing them with computer chips and equipment, according to my analysis of financial disclosures.

(Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Follow Technology

That same amount of money could pay for about four years’ worth of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the federal government program that distributes more than $90 billion in yearly food assistance to 42 million Americans. SNAP benefits are in limbo for now during the government shutdown.

• How do companies pay for the enormous sums they are lavishing on AI? Mostly, these companies make so much money that they can afford to go bananas.

One example: Google’s sales from showing us digital advertisements, $212 billion so far in 2025, are more than the annual revenue of Texas taken in from all sources, including from all state taxes, income from the federal government and land income.

• Eight of the world’s top 10 most valuable companies are AI-centric or AI-ish American corporate giants — Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Broadcom, Meta and Tesla. That’s according to tallies from S&P Global Market Intelligence based on the total price of the companies’ stock held by investors.

Skip to end of carousel

(Patrick Dias for The Washington Post)

Tech Friend writer Shira Ovide gives you advice and context to make technology work for you. Sign up for the free Tech Friend newsletter. Contact her securely on Signal at ShiraOvide.70

End of carousel

Luby Liao

unread,

Nov 8, 2025, 10:12:19 PM (8 hours ago) Nov 8

to gila...@gmail.com, i_love_taiwan

If you find the numbers shocking, remember that the author only talked about the top eight American companies. She does not talk about other countries, such as Japan, Korea, or Germany. She doesn't even mention China or its companies. She wrote:

Eight of the world’s top 10 most valuable companies are AI-centric or AI-ish American corporate giants — Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Broadcom, Meta and Tesla.

She left out the arguably most important AI company, TSMC. Cheers, Luby

On Sun, Nov 9, 2025 at 1:32 AM Key Wu <gila...@gmail.com> wrote:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/11/07/ai-bubble-spending/

No one knows if AI is a bubble, but it is totally bonkers - The Washington Post
Maybe you’ve heard that artificial intelligence is a bubble poised to burst. Maybe you have heard that it isn’t. (No one really knows either way, but that won’t stop the bros from jabbering about it constantly.)
But I can confidently tell you that the money being thrown around for AI is so huge that numbers have lost all meaning. The companies pouring money in are so rich and so power-hungry (in multiple meanings of that term) that our puny human brains cannot really comprehend.
So let’s try to give some meaning and context to the stratospheric numbers in AI. Is it a bubble? Eh, who knows. But it is completely bonkers.
• In just the past year, the four richest companies developing AI — Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta — have spent roughly $360 billion combined for big-ticket projects, which included building AI data centers and stuffing them with computer chips and equipment, according to my analysis of financial disclosures.
(Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Follow Technology
That same amount of money could pay for about four years’ worth of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the federal government program that distributes more than $90 billion in yearly food assistance to 42 million Americans. SNAP benefits are in limbo for now during the government shutdown.
• How do companies pay for the enormous sums they are lavishing on AI? Mostly, these companies make so much money that they can afford to go bananas.
One example: Google’s sales from showing us digital advertisements, $212 billion so far in 2025, are more than the annual revenue of Texas taken in from all sources, including from all state taxes, income from the federal government and land income.

• Eight of the world’s top 10 most valuable companies are AI-centric or AI-ish American corporate giants — Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Broadcom, Meta and Tesla. That’s according to tallies from S&P Global Market Intelligence based on the total price of the companies’ stock held by investors.

My analysis of the S&P data shows that the collective worth of those eight giants, $23 trillion, is more than the value of the next 96 most valuable U.S. companies put together, which includes many still very rich names such as JPMorgan, Walmart, Visa and ExxonMobil.
• No. 1 on that list, the AI computer chip seller Nvidia, last week become the first company in history to reach a stock market value of $5 trillion.
That alone was more than the value of entire stock markets in most countries, Bloomberg News reported, other than the five biggest (in the U.S., China, Japan, Hong Kong and India). Alas, Nvidia was down to a measly $4.4 trillion as of Friday morning.
• All the announced or under-construction data centers for powering AI would consume roughly as much electricity as 44 million households in the United States if they run full tilt, according to a recent analysis by the Barclays investment bank as reported by the Financial Times.

For context, that’s nearly one-third of the total number of residential housing units in the entire country, according to U.S. Census Bureau housing estimates for 2024.
• Nvidia pledged this fall to invest up to $100 billion in ChatGPT parent company OpenAI as part of its insatiable hunger for cash and resources. (The Post has a content partnership with OpenAI.)
Or, nearly the equivalent amount could be spent on police, firefighters, courts, public schools and hospitals, social services, parks and more for 8.5 million people. The government spending of New York, the largest city in America, was $118 billion in the last fiscal year.