What comes next?

I remember when the dot-com bubble burst in Y2K. It was a heady time for a young engineer, with all the fear about the millennium bug and then one day all these exciting and dynamic internet businesses were just imploding all around us.

For someone who took to the internet in it's relative infancy like I did, I can't help but draw parallels between the dot-com bubble and the contemporary AI industry. There seems to be a great deal of circular investment, and big brands being kept afloat entirely by venture capital rather than by real sales and profit margins.

We're cruising for a collapse. The bubble is going to burst. Investors want a return on their investment, shareholders expect value on their balance sheet. You don't get that unless you're actually selling something.

Today, people barely want to buy what the AI companies are selling, and it is ruinously expensive to run.

Not only are they expensive, but these services are having a direct negative impact on consumers by way of soaring memory prices. The demand from AI businesses is even pushing consumer RAM brands out of the market altogether as parent companies focus on their more lucrative AI/hyperscale business.

The thing that really salts the wound though, is that when the bubble does finally burst and all this AI hardware gets auctioned off - most of it will be totally useless to the average user.

HBM will not fit in your gaming PC. Sorry.

What's going to happen with it all? Is it going to be treated like old bitcoin mining kit and get recycled for the precious metals?

A Grace Blackwell GPU costs what, £70,000? What will that be worth second hand ex AI workload after the bubble bursts? It'll give you £30 if you throw in the chassis, I need a new coffee table alright?