from Hacker News

OpenAI is Lehman Brothers: A crash is coming

by NN88 on 12/27/24, 1:20 AM with 19 comments

  • by throwup238 on 12/27/24, 1:48 AM

    This site has published a bunch of "OpenAI is [famous company]" articles today, each with a different thesis.

    OpenAI is Taco Bell: https://sherwood.news/tech/openai-is-taco-bell/

    OpenAI is Pixar: https://sherwood.news/tech/openai-is-pixar/

    OpenAI is Napster: https://sherwood.news/tech/openai-is-napster/

    OpenAI is Salesforce: https://sherwood.news/tech/openai-is-salesforce/

    And so on. They're all listed here: https://sherwood.news/tech/what-companys-past-reveals-the-fu...

  • by dosinga on 12/27/24, 2:57 AM

    The thing that made Lehman Brothers Lehman Brothers was not that they had a bad business model (the article says so much). It was that they were a central player in a network of financial products that were poorly understood that redistributed risk in a way even less understood. So when the music stopped markets froze because nobody knew who was solvent and who wasn't.

    Hard to see what the equivalent in the OpenAI scenario is. Presumably when the music stops a bunch of VCs lose their shirts, the three trillion companies become ordinary trillion dollar companies and silicon valley moves on to look for the next big thing. Probably way more comparable to the dotcom bust.

  • by matt3210 on 12/27/24, 1:41 AM

    All these AI services are a great value for the money. I can’t believe that it’s profitable in any way. It seems to me anecdotally that once some market share is reached prices will skyrocket.

    I don’t think the barrier to entry is big enough to make this scaling model suitable.

  • by jmclnx on 12/27/24, 3:01 AM

    I do not think an AI crash will come close to the damage the mortgage crisis of 2008 did.

    But, I agree a crash is coming and it will probably mirror the dot-com crash. The only question is Nvidia, I think Nvidia has potential to cause a lot of pain.

  • by vanrysss on 12/27/24, 4:35 AM

    People said the same thing about Uber, but they're still running

  • by andersco on 12/27/24, 1:35 AM

    I am no financial expert but this all feels spot on.