Claims checked against evidence by Ed Zitron, page 6 of 11
Deadlines are judged as of 2026-10-29. About Ed Zitron and the sources covered.
Claims checked against evidence by Ed Zitron (1044)
Each of these claims was checked against dated evidence.
Page 6 of 11: claims 501 to 600 of 1044, ordered by the date first said, newest first. To find a claim by its words, use search.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Forecast
“At some point reality will set in and spending on NVIDIA GPUs will have to decline.”
Our reading: Spending on NVIDIA GPUs will eventually have to decline.
No deadline stated Evidence as of
Limitation: Supplier revenue is not identical to customer cash spending.
Source: The AI Industry Is Lying To You
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“Anthropic’s constant flow of “annualized” revenues ended up equating to literally $5 billion in revenue in four years, on $25 billion or more in salaries and compute.”
Our reading: Over four years Anthropic made about $5 billion in actual revenue against $25 billion or more in salaries and compute.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The speaker does not identify the four years; the contract provisionally uses 2022–2025.
Source: The AI Industry Is Lying To You
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Causal claim
“Software engineers aren’t being replaced — they’re being laid off because the software that’s meant to replace them is too expensive, while in practice not replacing anybody at all.”
Our reading: AI is not replacing software engineers; they are being laid off because AI tooling is so expensive.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Corporate explanations may omit other motives.
Source: The AI Industry Is Lying To You
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Forecast
“Developer Mortensen claims the entire project will be completed by October 2026, which it obviously, blatantly won’t.”
Our reading: Stargate Abilene will not be fully completed by October 2026.
Not yet due Evidence as of
Limitation: Oracle's statement is available through a third-party transcript host.
Source: The AI Industry Is Lying To You
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Causal claim
“NVIDIA is selling GPUs years into the future, and its ability to grow, or even just maintain its current revenues, depends wholly on its ability to convince people that this is somehow rational.”
Our reading: NVIDIA is selling GPUs years into the future, and its ability to grow, or even just maintain its current revenues, depends wholly on its ability to convince people that this is somehow rational.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Customer announcements do not disclose all purchase terms or revenue recognition dates.
Source: The AI Industry Is Lying To You
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Causal claim
“And I’d argue it’s convenient to blame this solely on power issues, when the reality is clearly based on construction timelines that never made any sense to begin with. If it was just a power issue, more data centers would be near or at the finish line, waiting for power to be turned on.”
Our reading: Data center delays come from unrealistic construction timelines, not only power, because otherwise more would be finished and waiting for power.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Aggregate delay statistics do not establish project-level causation.
Source: The AI Industry Is Lying To You
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“So, I want to explain something very clearly for you, because it’s important you understand how fucked up shit has become: hyperscalers are forcing everybody in their companies to use AI tools as much as possible, tying compensation and performance use to token burn, and actively encouraging non-technical people to vibe-code features that actually reach production.”
Our reading: Hyperscalers are forcing everybody in their companies to use AI tools as much as possible, tying compensation and performance to token burn, and actively encouraging non-technical people to vibe-code features that actually reach production.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Several sources summarize internal records that were not publicly available.
Source: The AI Industry Is Lying To You
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“Even if they were, there’s not enough power for them to turn on.”
Our reading: Even if the data center capacity described as under active development (about 61GW of IT load) were being built, there is not enough power for it to turn on.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Regional adequacy findings cannot automatically be applied to every US project.
Source: The AI Industry Is Lying To You
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Conditional forecast
“At its current rate of construction, Stargate Abilene will be fully built sometime in late 2027.”
Our reading: At its current construction rate, Stargate Abilene will be fully built in late 2027.
Not yet due Evidence as of
Only if: at its current rate of construction
Source: The AI Industry Is Lying To You
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Forecast
“By the time they actually get all the Blackwells in Vera Rubin will be two years old!”
Our reading: By the time all purchased Blackwell GPUs are installed, Vera Rubin will be two years old.
No deadline stated Evidence as of
Limitation: Both the cohort and the starting point for Rubin's age need clearer definitions.
Source: The AI Industry Is Lying To You
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Conditional forecast
“Simple questions like “where are the GPUs going?” and “how many actual GPUs have been installed?” are left unanswered as article after article gets written about massive, multi-billion dollar compute deals for data centers that won’t be built before, at this rate, 2030.”
Our reading: At the current rate, data centers in the announced multi-billion dollar compute deals will not be built before 2030.
Not yet due Evidence as of
Only if: at the current rate
Source: The AI Industry Is Lying To You
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“Nevertheless, based on these data points, I’m comfortable estimating that North American data center absorption — as the IT load of data centers actually turned on and in operation — was at around 3GW for 2025, which would work out to about 3.9GW of total power.”
Our reading: About 3GW of IT load (about 3.9GW of power) of North American data center capacity was actually turned on in 2025.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Market coverage differs substantially between trackers.
Source: The AI Industry Is Lying To You
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“NVIDIA’s overall data center segment revenue was $195.7 billion, which puts America’s data center purchases at around $135 billion, leaving around $44 billion of GPUs and associated technology uninstalled.”
Our reading: Around $44 billion of NVIDIA GPUs and associated gear sold to America in FY2026 remained uninstalled.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Revenue is not customer-held uninstalled inventory.
Source: The AI Industry Is Lying To You
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“Then there’s the very, very obvious scandal that NVIDIA, the largest company on the stock market, is making hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue on chips that aren’t being installed.”
Our reading: NVIDIA is earning hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue on chips that are not being installed.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The annual revenue figure covers a different period from the contract's October 27, 2025–January 25, 2026 reference quarter [e1].
Source: The AI Industry Is Lying To You
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Forecast
“All Nebius had to do to raise $3.75 billion in debt was to sign a deal with Meta for data center capacity that doesn’t exist and will likely take three to four years to build (it’s never happening).”
Our reading: The data center capacity Nebius contracted to Meta, which let it raise $3.75 billion in debt, does not exist, will likely take three to four years to build, and will never happen.
No deadline stated Evidence as of
Limitation: Company construction updates are self-reported.
Source: The AI Industry Is Lying To You
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“With the acceleration of NVIDIA’s GPU sales, it now takes about 6 months to install and operationalize a single quarter’s worth of sales.”
Our reading: It currently takes about six months to install and operationalize one quarter's worth of NVIDIA GPU sales.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Public financial and property-market reports are proxies for the physical quantities at issue.
Source: The AI Industry Is Lying To You
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“And thanks to an affidavit from Anthropic Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao filed as part of Anthropic’s suit against the Department of Defense’s supply chain risk designation, it’s clear that the deception was intentional, as the affidavit confirmed that Anthropic’s lifetime revenue “to date” (referring to March 9th 2026) is $5 billion, and it has spent $10 billion on inference and training.”
Our reading: Anthropic's lifetime revenue to March 9, 2026 is about $5 billion against $10 billion in inference and training spend, showing intentional deception in its revenue messaging.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Paragraph 8 supplies lower bounds rather than exact cumulative totals and does not specify calendar starting dates for both measures [e1, paragraph 8].
Source: The Beginning Of History
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“There are many signs that the past no longer makes sense. The collapse of SaaS (which I’ll cover in this week’s premium), the collapse of the business models of both venture capital and private equity”
Our reading: SaaS and the business models of venture capital and private equity are collapsing.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The speaker supplies no measure, geography or threshold for collapse.
Source: The Beginning Of History
Assessment: SupportedSaid
Observation
“For some context, OpenAI raised around $42bn in 2025 alone.”
Our reading: OpenAI raised around $42bn in 2025.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Support depends on the ordinary approximate reading of around; exact equality is not established.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“Sure you can say “it’s projections,” but there is a clear attempt to use the media to misinform investors and the general public. For example, OpenAI claimed SoftBank would spend $3bn a year on agents in 2025. That never happened!”
Our reading: There is a clear attempt by OpenAI to use the media to misinform investors and the public; for example, OpenAI claimed SoftBank would spend $3bn a year on agents in 2025, which never happened.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Rollout timing cannot substitute for payment records.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“OpenAI and AI companies are not a ponzi scheme. There’s real revenues, people are paying it money.”
Our reading: OpenAI and AI companies are not a ponzi scheme, because customers pay them real revenue.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The evidence supports the distinction between operating businesses and businesses with no real customers.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“Nevertheless, Dario Amodei gets fawning press about being a patriot that deeply cares about safety less than a week after Anthropic dropped its safety pledge to not train an AI system unless it could guarantee in advance that its safety measures were accurate.”
Our reading: Amodei gets fawning press as a patriot who deeply cares about safety less than a week after Anthropic dropped its pledge not to train an AI system unless it could guarantee in advance that its safety measures were accurate.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The cited policy evidence does not establish that all safeguards or every requirement to delay development were removed [e1, e2].
Assessment: SupportedSaid
Observation
“Both of these companies are enthusiastic parts of America’s war machine.”
Our reading: OpenAI and Anthropic are both enthusiastic participants in America's war machine.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: This assesses conduct and public statements, not private enthusiasm.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“There are members of the media who defend OpenAI saying that “these are annualized figures,” but OpenAI does not state that, because OpenAI loves to lie.”
Our reading: OpenAI's December 2025 revenue graphic was designed to mislead because it does not say its figures are annualized.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The central visual evidence was not transcribed.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“Stop Reporting That It Raised $110bn, It Is Factually Incorrect”
Our reading: Reporting that OpenAI raised $110bn is factually incorrect, because Amazon invested only $15bn (with $35bn contingent on AGI or an IPO) and NVIDIA and SoftBank are paying in installments.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The criticism has a supported factual foundation about financing structure.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“What I’m trying to get at is that OpenAI (and, for that matter, Anthropic) has spent the last two years increasingly obfuscating the truth through leak after leak to the media.”
Our reading: For the past two years, OpenAI and Anthropic have increasingly hidden the truth about their finances through repeated leaks to the media.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Several original financial reports were inaccessible through read_page.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“But the biggest thing to take away from this is that one of the classic arguments against my work is that “costs will just come down,” but the costs never come down.”
Our reading: Contrary to the argument that AI costs will fall, the AI labs' costs have never come down.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The result depends materially on what costs means.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“Based on my own reporting, which has been ignored (I guess it’s easier to do that than think about it?) by much of the press, OpenAI made $4.33bn through the end of September, and spent $8.67bn on inference in that period.”
Our reading: Through the end of September 2025, OpenAI made $4.33bn in revenue and spent $8.67bn on inference.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The independently sourced accounting explanation relies on an unnamed source.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“Forgive me for being cynical about something from Sam fucking Altman, but I just don’t trust the guy, and this is an (as of writing this sentence) unsigned contract with bus-sized loopholes.”
Our reading: OpenAI's revised Pentagon contract language was unsigned at the time of writing and contains huge loopholes that allow domestic surveillance.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Unsigned status rests on a secondary relay of reporting.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“we’re at around $37bn — leaving OpenAI with about…$20bn in cash at the end of the year.”
Our reading: By his estimates, OpenAI spent about $37bn in the second half of 2025 and ended the year with about $20bn in cash.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Correct addition does not establish that the inputs were cash transactions.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“The Department of Defense had agreed to terms around not using Claude for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous killing machines (the former of which it’s not particularly good at and the latter of which it flat out cannot do)”
Our reading: Claude is not very good at mass domestic surveillance and cannot run fully autonomous weapons at all.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Classified systems may not have publicly available evaluations.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“software is not as simple as spitting out code, neither is it able to automatically clone the SaaS experience.”
Our reading: Software is not as simple as generating code, and AI coding tools such as Claude Code cannot automatically clone the SaaS experience.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The result depends on what counts as the SaaS experience and automatic completion.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“This is turning into a very involved and convoluted process! It turns out that it's pretty difficult to actually raise $100 billion.”
Our reading: OpenAI's $100 billion funding round is proving difficult and convoluted to raise.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The contemporaneous account summarizes The Information’s reporting about proposed terms; it does not verify completed payments or binding commitments [e1].
Source: On NVIDIA and Analyslop
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“Let's start with the simplest, and least-technical way of putting it: even in the best-case scenario, you do not just type "Build Be A Salesforce Competitor" and it erupts, fully-formed, from your Terminal window. It is not capable of building it, but even if it were, it would need to actually be on a cloud hosting platform, and have all manner of actual customer data entered into it.”
Our reading: Claude Code is not capable of building a Salesforce competitor from a prompt.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The available technical evidence concerns other application types or tasks.
Source: On NVIDIA and Analyslop
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“This is a complete and utter lie. A bald-faced lie. This is not something that Claude Code can do.”
Our reading: Claude Code cannot let a competent developer replicate the core functionality of a mid-market SaaS product in weeks well enough that a CIO reviewing a $500k annual renewal would ask whether to build it in-house, and Citrini's claim that it can is a lie.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The strongest relevant evidence is a self-reported demonstration.
Source: On NVIDIA and Analyslop
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“As I wrote about last year, NVIDIA’s diversified revenue — that’s the revenue that comes from companies that aren’t in the magnificent 7 — continues to collapse.”
Our reading: NVIDIA's revenue from companies outside the Magnificent 7 continues to collapse.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Management’s growth statement is qualitative.
Source: On NVIDIA and Analyslop
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“After misleading everybody that it intended to invest $100 billion in OpenAI last year (as I warned everybody about months ago, the deal never existed and is now effectively dead), NVIDIA was allegedly “close” to investing $30 billion.”
Our reading: NVIDIA's announced $100 billion investment in OpenAI never really existed, was misleading, and is now effectively dead.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Private negotiations are described through unnamed sources.
Source: On NVIDIA and Analyslop
Assessment: SupportedSaid
Causal claim
“And yet, the myth that LLMs are an existential threat to existing software companies has taken root in the market, sending the share prices of the legacy incumbents tumbling.”
Our reading: The myth that LLMs are an existential threat to existing software companies has taken root in the market and sent the share prices of legacy software incumbents tumbling.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Causal attribution rests on contemporary market commentary and reporting rather than a controlled event study.
Source: On NVIDIA and Analyslop
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“We have absolutely no proof this happened other than Anthropic saying it, but because the media repeated it it’s now a fact.”
Our reading: There is no proof beyond Anthropic's word that Claude Sonnet 4.5 coded for 30 hours or built a Slack/Teams-like chat app.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Absence from the searched sources is not proof of universal absence.
Source: On NVIDIA and Analyslop
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“This is a big problem, because OpenAI needs $655 billion in the next five years to pay all its bills, and loses billions of dollars a year.”
Our reading: OpenAI needs $655 billion over the next five years to pay its bills and loses billions of dollars a year.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The claim combines two financial metrics that cannot be represented by one comparable total.
Source: On NVIDIA and Analyslop
Assessment: SupportedSaid
Observation
“It is both peculiar and worrying that 36% (around $77.7 billion) of its $215.938 billion in FY2026 revenue came from two customers.”
Our reading: About 36% of NVIDIA's FY2026 revenue came from two customers, which is peculiar and worrying.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The customers are unnamed.
Source: On NVIDIA and Analyslop
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Forecast
“Regardless, my point is that you will not just “make your own software.””
Our reading: Companies will not simply use AI to make their own software in place of SaaS.
No deadline stated Evidence as of
Limitation: The result depends on preserving the contextual meaning of “just.”
Source: On NVIDIA and Analyslop
Assessment: ContradictedSaid
Observation
“Claude Code does not actually build unique software.”
Our reading: Claude Code does not build unique software.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The counterexample is verification code within an existing project, not a complete commercial application or evidence of a newly invented proof technique. [e1]
Source: On NVIDIA and Analyslop
Assessment: ContradictedSaid
Observation
“Every example you've read about somebody being amazed by it has built a toy app or website that's very similar to many open source projects or website templates that Anthropic trained its training data on.”
Our reading: Every example you have read of somebody being amazed by Claude Code involves a toy app or website very similar to the many open source projects or website templates in Anthropic's training data.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: “Toy” is qualitative, although the implemented scope provides a strong ordinary distinction.
Source: On NVIDIA and Analyslop
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“which also includes evidence that OpenAI's revenues were at around $4.5 billion by the end of September, a vast difference from the $4.3 billion for the first half of the year published by other outlets.”
Our reading: OpenAI's revenues were around $4.5 billion by the end of September 2025, a vast difference from the $4.3 billion for the first half of the year published by other outlets.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: News reporting was used because matching primary financial records were not obtained.
Source: 2025, A Retrospective
Assessment: MixedSaid
Causal claim
“Deep Impact, my analysis of the DeepSeek situation and why it scared the American AI industry (clue: it's cost-related and nothing to do with "national security").”
Our reading: DeepSeek scared the American AI industry because of cost, not because of national security.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The market report does not establish individual investors' or executives' private motives [e1].
Source: 2025, A Retrospective
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“I published proof that OpenAI couldn't afford to pay Oracle and Oracle didn't have the capacity to service their farcical $300 billion, 5-year-long deal.”
Our reading: As of September 12, 2025, OpenAI couldn't afford to pay Oracle and Oracle didn't have the capacity to service their $300 billion, five-year deal.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The affordability and capacity readings materially affect the test.
Source: 2025, A Retrospective
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“on how GPT-5's router mode actually costs OpenAI more money to run.”
Our reading: GPT-5's router mode costs OpenAI more money to run.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The comparison baseline is an evaluator interpretation.
Source: 2025, A Retrospective
Assessment: ContradictedSaid
Observation
“how data center developers have no exit route, and US economic growth has become shouldered entirely by big tech.”
Our reading: Data center developers have no exit route, and US economic growth is carried entirely by big tech.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The period and literal reading materially affect this assessment.
Source: 2025, A Retrospective
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“how its future relies on endless debt, how millions of GPUs are sitting waiting to be installed, and why it no longer makes sense to buy more GPUs.”
Our reading: NVIDIA's future relies on endless debt, millions of GPUs are sitting waiting to be installed, and it no longer makes sense to buy more GPUs.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The financial component has an unknown accounting basis.
Source: 2025, A Retrospective
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Forecast
“how AI revenues will never pay back the cost of these GPUs”
Our reading: AI revenues will never pay back the cost of these GPUs, meaning the NVIDIA GPUs being bought for AI.
No deadline stated Evidence as of
Limitation: Projected payback and annualized revenue are not realized recovery.
Source: 2025, A Retrospective
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“an analysis of reported cash burn and investments in OpenAI that proved the company burned more than $4 billion more than we know.”
Our reading: OpenAI burned more than $4 billion more cash than had been publicly known.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The historical period remains incompletely specified.
Source: 2025, A Retrospective
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“there are no profitable generative AI companies”
Our reading: No generative AI company is profitable.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The latest-quarter interpretation is added by the evaluator.
Source: 2025, A Retrospective
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Causal claim
“The mistake that every investor, commentator, analyst and member of the media makes about NVIDIA is believing that its sales are an expression of demand for AI compute, when it’s really more of a statement about the availability of debt from banks and private credit.”
Our reading: NVIDIA's sales reflect how much debt is available from banks and private credit more than demand for AI compute.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Financing and demand can reinforce each other.
Source: The Enshittifinancial Crisis
Assessment: ContradictedSaid
Observation
“The market for AI compute is not actually growing. In the last two years, no new major consumers of AI compute have emerged.”
Our reading: The AI compute market is not growing; no new major compute consumers have emerged in two years.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The verdict rests on the categorical assertion about new major consumers.
Source: The Enshittifinancial Crisis
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“Anthropic cannot afford to pay Broadcom $10 billion right now!”
Our reading: Anthropic currently cannot afford to pay Broadcom $10 billion for its chip order.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: A loss-making company can still have substantial liquidity.
Source: The Enshittifinancial Crisis
Assessment: ContradictedSaid
Causal claim
“I want to be really, abundantly clear about what’s happening: every single stock you see “growing because of AI” outside of those selling RAM and GPUs is actually growing because of something else.”
Our reading: Apart from RAM and GPU sellers, stocks said to be growing because of AI are actually growing for other reasons.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Independent news reports supply the market attribution; company disclosures alone cannot establish it.
Source: The Enshittifinancial Crisis
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Forecast
“By the beginning of 2027, Stargate Abilene will be obsolete, as will any and all data centers filled with Blackwell GPUs, as will any and all data centers being built today.”
Our reading: By early 2027, Stargate Abilene and all data centers filled with Blackwell GPUs or being built today will be obsolete.
Not yet due Evidence as of
Limitation: Commercial obsolescence is not precisely defined.
Source: The Enshittifinancial Crisis
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Forecast
“I believe that massive valuation drawdowns are a certainty. There are losses coming.”
Our reading: AI startup valuations will certainly suffer massive drawdowns and investors will take losses.
No deadline stated Evidence as of
Limitation: Private fund marks and investor distributions are incompletely disclosed.
Source: The Enshittifinancial Crisis
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“Otherwise, when you remove the contracts signed by hyperscalers and OpenAI (which I do not believe has paid anybody other than Microsoft yet), based on my analysis, there was less than a billion dollars of AI compute revenue in 2025, or 0.5831% of the money spent on data centers.”
Our reading: Excluding hyperscaler and OpenAI contracts, AI compute revenue in 2025 was under $1 billion.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The market includes private suppliers with limited financial disclosure.
Source: The Enshittifinancial Crisis
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Forecast
“Eventually, reality will dawn on one or more of these banks. Projects will get delayed thanks to weather, or budgetary issues, or when customers walk away (as just happened to data center REIT Fermi). Loan payments will start going unpaid.”
Our reading: Data center projects will get delayed and loan payments will eventually start going unpaid.
No deadline stated Evidence as of
Limitation: Private loan defaults may go unreported.
Source: The Enshittifinancial Crisis
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“When Oracle announced its $300 billion deal with OpenAI in September — one that Oracle does not have the capacity to fill and OpenAI does not have the money to pay for – analysts heaved and stammered like horny teenagers seeing their first boob:”
Our reading: Oracle lacks the capacity to fulfil its $300 billion deal with OpenAI, and OpenAI lacks the money to pay for it.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Company assurances are not independent capacity measurements.
Source: The Enshittifinancial Crisis
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Forecast
“Eventually, data centers are going to go unbuilt, and data center debt packages will begin to fall apart.”
Our reading: Data centers will eventually go unbuilt and data center debt packages will begin to fall apart.
No deadline stated Evidence as of
Limitation: A broader interpretation of financing breakdown could change the assessment.
Source: The Enshittifinancial Crisis
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“They are all losing tons of money and have no path to profitability.”
Our reading: Cognition, Perplexity, Cursor, Lovable, Cohere, Replit and Glean are all losing a lot of money and have no path to profitability.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Private-company financial disclosure is incomplete.
Source: The Enshittifinancial Crisis
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Forecast
“The same fate awaits H100 GPUs too.”
Our reading: H100 GPUs will, like A100s, fall to low rental prices as they age.
No deadline stated Evidence as of
Limitation: Approximately $1 is an interpretation of the A100 analogy.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“Nobody has made a profit from AI, and those making revenue aren’t really making much.”
Our reading: Nobody has made a profit from AI, and AI revenues are small.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The counterexample is a founder's statement reported in an interview, not a verified profit statement.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“I do not know where these six million Blackwell GPUs have gone, but they certainly haven’t gone into data centers that are powered and turned on.”
Our reading: The six million Blackwell GPUs NVIDIA says it shipped have not gone into powered, operating data centers.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The result depends on reading the sentence with its surrounding acknowledgment of deployments.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Forecast
“Once this pops — and it will pop, because there is simply not enough money to do this forever — there must be a referendum on those that chose to ignore the naked instability of this era, and the endless lies that inflated the AI bubble.”
Our reading: The AI bubble will pop because there is not enough money to sustain it forever.
No deadline stated Evidence as of
Limitation: The forecast's breadth and severity are qualitative.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Causal claim
“Because nobody else has really caught up with CUDA, NVIDIA has a functional monopoly, and yes, you can have a situation where a market has a monopoly, even if there is, at least in theory, competition.”
Our reading: Because no competitor has caught up with CUDA, NVIDIA has a functional monopoly on AI GPUs.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Broader accelerator-market findings are context for an AI GPU claim.
Assessment: MixedSaid
Observation
“Large Language Models are limited, AI agents are a pipedream and simply do not work, AI-powered products are unreliable and coding LLMs make developers slower, and the cost of inference — the way in which a model produces its output — keeps going up.”
Our reading: LLMs are limited, AI agents do not work, AI products are unreliable, coding LLMs make developers slower, and inference costs keep rising.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The coding result is specific to experienced developers working in familiar repositories.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“In really simple terms: there isn’t enough power or built data centers for those six million Blackwell GPUs, in part because the data centers aren’t built, and in part because there isn’t enough power for the ones that are.”
Our reading: There is not enough built data center capacity or power to deploy six million Blackwell GPUs.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The available constraint evidence concerns particular operators, regions or earlier periods.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“Any kind of depreciation schedule is based on, at best, assumptions, and at worst, hope.”
Our reading: Data center GPU depreciation schedules are based at best on assumptions and at worst on hope.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: One company's accounting disclosure does not establish industry-wide adequacy [e1].
Assessment: SupportedSaid
Observation
“NVIDIA is a company that sells all sorts of stuff, but the only reason you're hearing about it as a normal person is that NVIDIA's stock has become a load-bearing entity in the US stock market.”
Our reading: NVIDIA's stock has become a load-bearing entity in the US stock market.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The speaker supplied no numerical definition of load-bearing.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Forecast
“Both companies burn billions of dollars, and require an infinite amount of venture capital to keep alive at a time when the Saudi Public Investment Fund is struggling and the US venture capital system is set to run out of cash in the next year and a half.”
Our reading: OpenAI and Anthropic burn billions and depend on venture capital, while the US venture capital system is set to run out of cash within about 18 months.
Not yet due Evidence as of
Limitation: The evidence does not provide a complete balance of deployable capital, including callable commitments, deployment and replenishment [e1].
Assessment: SupportedSaid
Observation
“Did it matter that there was compelling evidence in 2022 (Gary Marcus was right!) that there were limits to scaling laws, and that we would hit the point of diminishing returns?”
Our reading: There was compelling evidence in 2022 that LLM scaling laws had limits and would hit diminishing returns, as Gary Marcus argued.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Support depends on reading limits as practical or task-specific constraints, not a proven universal ceiling.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“You have deals with both Lambda and CoreWeave to guarantee that they will have compute revenue, which they in turn use to raise debt, which is used to buy more of your GPUs.”
Our reading: NVIDIA guarantees compute revenue for Lambda and CoreWeave, which they use to raise debt to buy more NVIDIA GPUs.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Lambda's rental terms are reported indirectly, without an inspected contract.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Forecast
“At some point, a link in this debt-backed chain breaks, because very little cashflow exists to prop it up.”
Our reading: A link in the debt-backed AI compute chain will break because little cashflow supports it.
No deadline stated Evidence as of
Limitation: The packet's searches may have missed defaults or missed payments at smaller or private chain participants.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“Yet as dodgy and weird and unsustainable as this is, it isn’t illegal, and it certainly isn’t Enron, because, as NVIDIA has been trying to tell you, it is nothing like Enron!”
Our reading: NVIDIA's circular deals with neoclouds like CoreWeave, Lambda and Nebius are dodgy and unsustainable but not illegal.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The disclosures do not provide comparable deal-level obligations, receipts and financing coverage across CoreWeave, Lambda and Nebius [e1, e2].
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“In the same period, it spent $8.67 billion on inference (the process in which an LLM creates an output).”
Our reading: In the same period as the OpenAI figures he cites, OpenAI spent $8.67 billion on inference.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The period interpretation materially affects the assessment.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“In simple terms, NVIDIA’s customers rely on debt to buy its GPUs, and NVIDIA’s customers’ customers rely on debt to pay to rent them.”
Our reading: NVIDIA's customers rely on debt to buy GPUs, and their customers rely on debt to rent them.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The OpenAI disclosure predates the target quarter.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“To be clear, NVIDIA is quite different from Lucent. It has plenty of money, and the circular deals it does with CoreWeave and Lambda don’t involve the same levels of risk.”
Our reading: NVIDIA is quite different from Lucent; it has plenty of money and its circular deals with CoreWeave and Lambda carry less risk.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Substantial liquidity is not a complete measure of contractual risk.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“According to the documents viewed by this newsletter, OpenAI spent $5.02 billion on inference alone with Microsoft Azure in the first half of Calendar Year CY2025.”
Our reading: OpenAI spent $5.02 billion on inference with Microsoft Azure in the first half of 2025.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The underlying financial records were unavailable for inspection.
Source: Exclusive: Here's How Much OpenAI Spends On Inference and Its Revenue Share With Microsoft
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“Through September, Microsoft’s revenue share payments totalled $865.9 million, implying OpenAI’s revenues are at least $4.329 billion.”
Our reading: Microsoft's revenue share payments through September 2025 totalled $865.9M, implying OpenAI revenue of at least $4.329B.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The cited primary announcement concerns a later agreement update.
Source: Exclusive: Here's How Much OpenAI Spends On Inference and Its Revenue Share With Microsoft
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“This is a pattern that has continued through the end of September. By that point in CY2025 — three months later — OpenAI had spent $8.67 billion on inference.”
Our reading: OpenAI spent $8.67 billion on inference with Azure from January through September 2025.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The underlying quarterly records were unavailable.
Source: Exclusive: Here's How Much OpenAI Spends On Inference and Its Revenue Share With Microsoft
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“OpenAI’s inference spend with Microsoft Azure between CY2024 and Q3 CY2025 was $12.43 billion. That is an astonishing figure, one that dramatically dwarfs any and all reporting, which, based on my analysis, suggested that OpenAI spent $2 billion on inference in 2024 and $2.5 billion through H1 CY2025. In other words, inference costs are nearly triple that reported elsewhere.”
Our reading: OpenAI spent $12.43B on Azure inference from 2024 through Q3 2025, nearly triple what was reported elsewhere.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: No independently authenticated Azure inference ledger covers January 2024–September 2025.
Source: Exclusive: Here's How Much OpenAI Spends On Inference and Its Revenue Share With Microsoft
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“According to the documents, Microsoft received $493.8 million in revenue share payments in CY2024 from OpenAI — implying revenues for CY2024 of at least $2.469 billion, or around $1.23 billion less than the $3.7 billion that has been previously reported.”
Our reading: Microsoft received $493.8M in revenue share from OpenAI in 2024, implying OpenAI 2024 revenue of at least $2.469B, about $1.23B below reported figures.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: No underlying ledger or contract was available.
Source: Exclusive: Here's How Much OpenAI Spends On Inference and Its Revenue Share With Microsoft
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“I also cannot reconcile these numbers with the reporting that OpenAI will have a cash burn of $9 billion in CY2025. On inference alone, OpenAI has already spent $8.67 billion through Q3 CY2025.”
Our reading: Zitron cannot reconcile the documents' numbers with reporting that OpenAI will have a $9 billion cash burn in CY2025, given that OpenAI had already spent $8.67 billion on inference alone through Q3 CY2025.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: An earlier cash-burn projection is context, not the final annual result.
Source: Exclusive: Here's How Much OpenAI Spends On Inference and Its Revenue Share With Microsoft
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“Similarly, for the first half of CY2025, Microsoft received $454.7 million as part of its revenue share agreement, implying OpenAI’s revenues for that six-month period were at least $2.273 billion, or around $2 billion less than the $4.3 billion previously reported.”
Our reading: Microsoft's $454.7M revenue share in H1 2025 implies OpenAI revenue of at least $2.273B, about $2B below the reported $4.3B.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The payment figure's accessible reporting traces back to Zitron.
Source: Exclusive: Here's How Much OpenAI Spends On Inference and Its Revenue Share With Microsoft
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Forecast
“I believe that we’re going to see multiple price increases on AI-native companies in the next few months.”
Our reading: Within a few months of 2025-10-20, AI-native companies (products built on top of AI models) will face multiple price increases.
No deadline stated Evidence as of
Limitation: This record does not assess whether model providers changed their prices after October 2025.
Source: This Is How Much Anthropic and Cursor Spend On Amazon Web Services
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“Furthermore, I can confirm that through September, Anthropic has spent more than 100% of its estimated revenue (based on reporting in the last year) on Amazon Web Services, spending $2.66 billion on compute on an estimated $2.55 billion in revenue.”
Our reading: Through September 2025 Anthropic spent $2.66 billion on AWS against an estimated $2.55 billion in revenue, more than 100% of its revenue.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The packet contains no independent verification of January–September 2025 net AWS payments, including credits, discounts and prepayments.
Source: This Is How Much Anthropic and Cursor Spend On Amazon Web Services
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“Based on what I have been party to, the more successful Anthropic becomes, the more its services cost.”
Our reading: Based on what he has been party to, the more successful Anthropic becomes, the more its services cost.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The packet lacks independent, comparable AWS cash-payment records and matched realized revenue for the observation period.
Source: This Is How Much Anthropic and Cursor Spend On Amazon Web Services
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“I’m gonna be nice here and say that Anthropic made $600 million in 2024 — the higher end of The Information’s reporting — meaning that it spent around 226% of its revenue ($1.359 billion) on Amazon Web Services.”
Our reading: Assuming $600 million in revenue, Anthropic spent about 226% of its 2024 revenue on AWS.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: This assessment preserves the stated revenue assumption.
Source: This Is How Much Anthropic and Cursor Spend On Amazon Web Services
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Forecast
“Any product built on top of an AI model that shows any kind of success can be cloned immediately by OpenAI and Anthropic, and I believe that we’re going to see multiple price increases on AI-native companies in the next few months.”
Our reading: AI-native companies will see multiple price increases from model providers in the next few months.
Deadline passed Evidence as of
Limitation: The result depends on what counts as a price increase and how long the next few months lasts.
Source: This Is How Much Anthropic and Cursor Spend On Amazon Web Services
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“Although Cursor obtains the majority of its compute from Anthropic — with AWS contributing a relatively small amount, and likely also taking care of other parts of its business — the data seen reveals an overall direction of travel, where the costs of compute only keep on going up.”
Our reading: The AWS billing data seen for Anthropic and Cursor shows an overall direction of travel in which compute costs only keep going up.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: An upward pattern within the post's own numbers would check internal consistency, not independently verify the reported spending.
Source: This Is How Much Anthropic and Cursor Spend On Amazon Web Services
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“While I don’t know about prepayment for services, I can confirm from a source with direct knowledge of billing that Anthropic spent $1.35 billion on Amazon Web Services in 2024, and has already spent $2.66 billion on Amazon Web Services through the end of September.”
Our reading: Anthropic spent $1.35 billion on AWS in 2024 and $2.66 billion through September 2025.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The underlying billing records are unavailable.
Source: This Is How Much Anthropic and Cursor Spend On Amazon Web Services
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Causal claim
“Additionally, Cursor’s Amazon Web Services bills more than doubled from $6.2 million in May 2025 to $12.6 million in June 2025, exacerbating a cash crunch that began when Anthropic introduced Priority Service Tiers, an aggressive rent-seeking measure that begun what I call the Subprime AI Crisis, where model providers begin jacking up the prices on their previously subsidized rates.”
Our reading: Cursor's AWS bill more than doubled from May to June 2025, worsening a cash crunch that began when Anthropic introduced rent-seeking Priority Service Tiers, which started the Subprime AI Crisis.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Company explanations can omit other contributing causes.
Source: This Is How Much Anthropic and Cursor Spend On Amazon Web Services
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Conditional forecast
“In any case, these costs seem to increase with the amount of money Anthropic makes, meaning that the current pricing of both subscriptions and API access seems unprofitable, and must increase dramatically — from my calculations, a 100% price increase might work, but good luck retaining every single customer and their customers too! — for this company to ever become sustainable.”
Our reading: Because Anthropic's costs seem to rise with its revenue, its subscription and API pricing seems unprofitable and must increase dramatically for the company ever to become sustainable; by his calculations a 100% increase might work.
No deadline stated Evidence as of
Only if: for this company to ever become sustainable
Source: This Is How Much Anthropic and Cursor Spend On Amazon Web Services
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“The cost of inference is clearly increasing for customers, but based on its escalating monthly costs, the cost of inference appears to be high for Anthropic too, though it’s impossible to tell how much of its compute is based on training versus running inference.”
Our reading: Inference costs are rising for customers and appear high for Anthropic as well.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Flat token tariffs do not rule out higher bills caused by reduced allowances or changed workloads.
Source: This Is How Much Anthropic and Cursor Spend On Amazon Web Services
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Conditional forecast
“The ultimate problem is that there really are no winners in this situation. If Anthropic kills Cursor through aggressive rent-seeking, that directly eats into its own revenues. If Anthropic lets Cursor succeed, that’s revenue, but it’s also clearly unprofitable revenue.”
Our reading: There are no winners: if Anthropic kills Cursor through aggressive rent-seeking, that eats directly into its own revenues, and if it lets Cursor succeed, that revenue is clearly unprofitable.
No deadline stated Evidence as of
Only if: if Anthropic kills Cursor through aggressive rent-seeking
Source: This Is How Much Anthropic and Cursor Spend On Amazon Web Services
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“A source that has seen materials related to sales has confirmed that, as of August 2025, Microsoft has around eight million active licensed users of Microsoft 365 Copilot, amounting to a 1.81% conversion rate across the 440 million Microsoft 365 subscribers.”
Our reading: As of August 2025, Microsoft 365 Copilot had about 8 million active licensed users, a 1.81% conversion of 440 million subscribers.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The underlying sales materials and unnamed source are unavailable.
Source: The Case Against Generative AI