6.15.2026 – not sustainable

not sustainable
revenue, any says is …
is a con artist

I came across the blog, Where’s Your Ed At by Ed Zitron.

Mr. Zitron is is an English author, podcaster, and public relations specialist. He is a critic of the technology industry, particularly of artificial intelligence companies and the generative artificial intelligence boom of the 2020s.

In his blog post of June 8, 2026, AI Is Slowing Down, Mr. Zitron writes:

When your entire worldview is dictated by what a series of venture capitalists and psuedo-journalists on Twitter want you to believe, it must be difficult to imagine someone having “morals” or “beliefs” or that one might hold a position that wasn’t entirely based on greed or tribalism.

It must be confusing — upsetting, even! — to hear that somebody is willing to accurately and vociferously tear into a tech industry largely controlled by people with no regard for their users or workers, who are willing to bathe their products in mediocrity all because it’s the thing that everybody else is doing.

This is a hysterical era perpetuated by liars, cowards, imbeciles, craven boosters and the easily-fooled. Those excited about generative AI are either the victim or the perpetrator of a con centered around a technology to ingratiate at the highest cost possible.

Twenty-six percent of companies say they have a comprehensive view of their AI costs, while 50% have some visibility and 22% report no visibility or visibility after billing, according to an as-yet-unreleased survey from KPMG.

“It’s a new resource that needs to be managed that didn’t exist quite that way, and we’re seeing exponential growth,” said Steve Chase, KPMG’s global head of AI.

How utterly ridiculous!

Only in the frothiest, most-disconnected economy in history could we have companies spending millions (or tens or hundreds of millions) of dollars on a service without having any visibility into costs until after billing.

This is not a sustainable revenue stream under any circumstances, and anybody who says that it is is either ignorant, a mark or a con artist.

This is revenue made entirely by convincing your customers that something is true (AI is the most revolutionary thing ever!) and keeping them in the dark as long as humanly possible as they run up ridiculous bills, all in the hopes that you’ve brainwashed the executives/paypigs well enough that they’ll never stop.

What he is saying is that companies are spending big bucks to dig deep into AI.

Spending the big bucks … but getting nothing in return.

The only companies making money on AI are companies that are selling AI.

The companies that buy AI to improve the company are seeing no return for their investment.

But they keep pouring the money into AI.

This is not a sustainable revenue stream under any circumstances, and anybody who says that it is is either ignorant, a mark or a con artist.

There is an old metaphor of rats deserting a sinking ship.

It is taken as a sign that it’s all over the for the sinking ship in that even the rats are leaving.

Four days after this blog was published both OpenAI and Anthropic filed the paperwork to go public, starting a race for exit liquidity for two companies that burn billions of dollars a year and have no path to profitability.

In other words, the people who built OpenAI and Anthropic now what to let other folks take over the financial responsibility for the companies.

They do that by going public and letting the public buy up they company.

Of course that lets the people who built OpenAI and Anthropic to pocket all the cash and walk away.

And let the public deal with the fact that the company they just bought is selling something that no one wants.

That leads to the a moment where all the hopes and dreams and plans and such all burst, like a bubble.

I have been reading Andrew Sorkin’s 1929.

It opens with a bunch of Wall Street big wigs lobbying Congress to get rid of that silly rule that forbids the use of stock for collateral for a loan.

How can the little man make a big hit off the stock market if the little man can’t leverage the money he might make on stocks that he hasn’t paid for yet?

Well, we saw how that worked out.

It is happening again and not just little guys.

Mr. Zitron points out that Larry Ellison has also got at least $21 billion in loans collateralized by his Oracle shares, and any doubts around Oracle’s ability to pay for its debts or OpenAI’s ability to pay Oracle for its compute will threaten massive margin calls. 

Eyes wide shut folks.

It isn’t going to be pretty.

We might remember the days of $5 a gallon gas … fondly.