[Ekco]

Originally Posted by BradZax [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The true story about that allbirds company is a lot less funny or interesting than the urban legend.

What companies are investing in AI products? Starting AI store fronts? I haven't used ONE ai product yet. Where is the bubble? San Francisco? Shenzen China?

Who is going to get hurt when the bubble bursts, specifically?

The biggest companies investing in ai are investing in the infrastructure, which you and I agree will be as vital to literally everyone as the internet is now. Thats no bubble.

A small fraction of the AI investments goes into small startups in san francisco. THe rest goes to building data centers that will be extremely valuable for the next 40+ years for literally everyone. Even if we do ww3, monitoring everyone with computers is literally the future.

Thats all AI bubble is: just giant monitoring people software.

all the tech companies went from asset light money printer companies to spending hundreds of billions a year on AI and becoming asset heavy / debt based for a couple years now, due to the data centers they are basically utility companies now the story when we started this journey was pretty pie in the sky tier level shit and when those estimates collide with reality those stock prices will readjust to reality, the stock market will crash and boomers retirement accounts will implode, the people hurt will be literally everyone over the age of 30? 40- retirement age

Where you're right
The capex transformation is real and dramatic
Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Amazon have collectively committed $300B+ in AI capex for 2025 alone. These were historically asset-light businesses with 30-40% free cash flow margins. That's a structural shift, not a blip.
The utility company comparison has teeth
Data centers are long-duration, capital-intensive, largely fixed-cost infrastructure. That genuinely compresses the multiple the market should assign them. A utility trades at 15x earnings. These companies still trade at 25-35x+. That gap has to close somehow.
Valuation is pricing in perfection
Nvidia alone at one point was priced for essentially all AI capex flowing through them forever, at peak margins, indefinitely. That's not an investment thesis, that's a prayer.

The people who'd really get wrecked in your scenario are people within 5 years of retirement who are still overweight equities — that's a real and legitimate concern. The people who get hurt least are the young (time to recover) and the old-old (already in bonds/cash).
The core of your thesis is sound: the valuation math is hard to make work at current prices if AI monetization disappoints or takes longer than expected. The crash-and-boomers-wiped framing is probably too clean though — it'd be more diffuse, slower, and hit different demographics in messier ways than the narrative suggests.