AI and money
Investment, bubbles, business models, who pays and who earns. 185 quotes tagged #money, 1934 to 2026, newest first.
- October 2026
It's time to take your profits and not get greedy
Closing advice from Charles Gasparino's New York Post column arguing an AI stock market correction is imminent, October 2026.
New York PostThe AI bubble is about to burst — and a big market correction is coming
The correction is coming to AI
From a New York Post opinion column by Charles Gasparino comparing the AI investment boom to the dot-com bubble, published October 2026.
New York PostThe AI bubble is about to burst — and a big market correction is coming
Vertically integrated AI utility
Venture Global CEO Mike Sabel described the company's planned gas-fired power expansion for AI data centers, announced October 15, 2026, as creating a 'vertically integrated AI utility.'
Energy News BeatVenture Global Targets 10 GW of Gas-Fired Power for AI Data Centers
From Universal Music Group's lawsuit against distributor DistroKid, describing an influx of unauthorized AI-generated recordings delivered to streaming platforms.
Law CommentaryUniversal and Sony Seek to Force DistroKid to Reveal Scale of AI Music Uploads
They cannot ask, refuse, or demand fair payment
Korean Publishers Association statement on authors being unaware their books were used to train AI models like Claude.
CHOSUNBIZAnthropic trains AI on works by Korea authors without permission
The Korean Publishers Association issued a public appeal calling on the government and AI companies to disclose training data sources and compensate authors, after Anthropic's $1.5 billion copyright settlement included Korean writers' works.
A stark disconnect between the public markets and the private markets
Diana Doyle, Morgan Stanley's head of technology equity and equity-linked capital markets, speaking at a private tech conference in Dana Point, California, October 2026.
The InformationThe Party Is Still Going Strong for Private Tech
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman described Microsoft as being set free to pursue its own frontier AI ambitions after renegotiating terms with OpenAI, reported by TechCrunch in 2026.
Startup FortuneMicrosoft AI chief says his model beat OpenAI's using a quarter the compute
We can only hope that their regulators are watching
From the same Social Europe essay, on banks' indirect exposure to AI-linked private credit risk.
The humans need guardrails because I don't trust them
Cupertino co-creator Robert King, in a Deadline interview about his CBS show's AGI storyline, explaining his personal view on AI regulation.
Deadline'Cupertino' Creators On Episode 2's Shocking AGI Twist With Bo
This is a shift you can't ignore
Li Lingran, a Beijing engineer who spends over 200 yuan a month on AI tokens, commenting on the rise of China's token economy, October 2026.
chinadailyhkChina rolls out 'token factories' to drive AI economy
The market misunderstands and acts irrationally
CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator told staff this after the AI data center firm's stock fell 15.5% amid a broader neocloud sell-off, October 2026.
The InformationCoreWeave Co-Founders’ Stock Sales Aren’t Helping Investor Confidence
Cost is a big deal, and we want our customers to pay us, not the AI vendors
Chuck Alpert, AI fellow at Cadence, discussing open-weight AI models in EDA tool flows, quoted in Semiconductor Engineering, October 2026.
I don't buy into all the hype surrounding these frightening scenarios
Dan Simkowitz, co-president of Morgan Stanley, responding to concerns about high-yield debt financing AI infrastructure, October 2026.
Dan Simkowitz, co-president of Morgan Stanley, in an interview with Calcalist, October 2026, arguing the AI investment boom differs from past bubbles.
What would have taken roughly an hour to recreate manually became a strong first draft in seconds
Traci Tapani, Co-President of Wyoming Machine, describing using AI to convert a scanned shipping document into an editable file, at the U.S. Chamber's Small Business Council Fall Fly-In, October 2026.
uschamber.comSmall Businesses Take AI Wins to Capitol Hill - U.S. Chamber of Commerce
AI's greatest value is its ability to help smaller businesses move faster
Larry Kidd, CEO of :hire, speaking at the U.S. Chamber's Small Business Council Fall Fly-In on Capitol Hill, October 2026, about AI's benefits for small businesses.
uschamber.comSmall Businesses Take AI Wins to Capitol Hill - U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Still baffled by AI capex? you should be
Azeem Azhar posted on X in October 2026 questioning wildly divergent estimates of AI infrastructure spending.
There's never been an investment like the investment in railroads
Paul Graham posted on X in April 2026 comparing the scale of AI infrastructure spending to the 19th century railroad boom.
The risk for Apple is to become less relevant
Francisco Jeronimo, VP for Data and Analytics at IDC, speaking to DW in October 2026 about Apple's AI strategy under incoming CEO John Ternus.
dw.comCan new Apple CEO John Ternus fix the tech giant's AI woes?
The minimal documentable ROI and the trillions of dollars invested
Gary Marcus, commenting on AI investment versus measurable returns, October 2026.
Even in the U.S., data centers are hitting a wall
An anonymous data center industry executive, quoted in CTech about Israel's proposed 200-megawatt cap on new facilities, October 2026.
ctechIsrael to cap new data centers at 200 megawatts amid AI power crunch
Phrase used by Gary Marcus describing the collapse of a trend toward scaling AI token usage amid price wars from Chinese open-weight models.
Gary Marcus (Substack)Could this be the Frontier Labs’ WeWork moment?
Gary Marcus, writing on his Substack in October 2026 about AI frontier labs and liability risk from poorly controlled agents.
Gary Marcus (Substack)Could this be the Frontier Labs’ WeWork moment?
Den extrem hohen umsatz mit dieser technologie müssen wir besteuern
German Federal Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger, quoted in Tagesspiegel (October 2026), proposed taxing AI revenues to fund labor market transformation. Translated from German.
FAZ.NETWildberger will KI-Umsätze in Deutschland besteuern - FAZ
They don't show up on the P&L in a way that justifies significant infrastructure investment
Louis Landry, CTO at Teradata, on individual AI productivity gains versus enterprise-level returns, reported by Forkast, October 2026.
ForkastDeploying Blind: AI Agent Adoption Has Outpaced Its Evidence - Forkast News
Democratic Senate candidate Annie Andrews gave Republican Sen. Darline Graham of South Carolina this nickname during a 2026 debate over AI data centers.
NBC NewsSouth Carolina Senate rivals spar over Iran war, AI and Trump in fiery debate
DistroKid gave up on customer service about two years ago
Music producer Jesse Cannon speaking to The Verge about DistroKid's handling of takedowns tied to a UMG lawsuit over an alleged AI-slop pipeline.
The VergeDistroKid has been quietly taking down songs in response to UMG lawsuit
Phrase from UMG's September lawsuit against DistroKid, cited in a report on the company removing artists' songs.
The VergeDistroKid has been quietly taking down songs in response to UMG lawsuit
The most consequential technology
Francisco Jeronimo, VP at IDC, describing AI's importance for Apple's future in an interview with DW, October 2026.
dw.comCan new Apple CEO John Ternus fix the tech giant's AI woes?
I can support my family working three days a week
Jeff Bezos, in an interview with Fox News host Bret Baier in October 2026, discussed how AI-driven productivity could allow shorter workweeks.
Lots of what they buy is frankly crap
From an Interconnects essay by Nathan Lambert on AI research acceleration, describing the low quality of RL training data sold by data companies.
Interconnects (Nathan Lambert)I expect rapid progress but not towards general superintelligence
You don't want to feed it into some closed-source API
Alibaba chairman Joe Tsai, at the Wave tech event in Italy in October 2026, urging European manufacturers to keep their data out of closed-source AI systems.
They're really relying on the kindness of strangers
On the Acquirers Podcast, October 2026, Tobias Carlisle discussed OpenAI's reliance on continued outside financing to cover its massive spending obligations.
Our nation can't afford to lose
Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman, in a blog post defending AI data center expansion, argued the US cannot afford to fall behind in the global AI race.
Open weights do not make intelligence free, they make it portable
From a HackerNoon analysis (Oct 2026) on open-weight AI models and inference infrastructure shifting competitive advantage away from model training.
They're selling $100 bills for $1 each
Journalist and sci-fi author Cory Doctorow, in a video titled 'The AI Bubble is About to Burst and We'll All Pay' (Sept. 11), on the unsustainable economics of AI companies.
Brian Chesky describing how AI now allows one, two or three people to launch a company, in a podcast published October 1, 2026.
TokenPostAirbnb CEO Brian Chesky Says AI Makes Starting Companies Easier
Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky, in a podcast published October 1, 2026, on how AI has made starting companies easier than when he founded Airbnb.
TokenPostAirbnb CEO Brian Chesky Says AI Makes Starting Companies Easier
Menlo Ventures partner Matt Murphy on Anthropic's stock, speaking at Tech Insider: Growth Mode, October 2026.
Business InsiderHere's the secret to Anthropic success, according to an early investor
He's like them, and he's one of the best
Menlo Ventures partner Matt Murphy, an early Anthropic investor, speaking about CEO Dario Amodei at Tech Insider: Growth Mode in San Francisco, October 2026.
Business InsiderHere's the secret to Anthropic success, according to an early investor
Knowing who the person is, I think matters less
Samantha Jacobson of OpenAI discussed the company's approach to ad targeting in ChatGPT without relying on personal data.
DigidayOpenAI would like to remind marketers that its ads are for the good of humanity
They don't really have very good options today
Reflection AI CEO Misha Laskin, quoted by Semafor in October 2026, on governments and businesses seeking non-Chinese open AI models for sovereign systems.
This is a drop in the bucket for them, but that book was fundamental to making my career
Craig Cipolla, Tufts professor, on the imbalance between a large AI company's resources and the value of an author's work, discussing the Anthropic copyright settlement.
Don't wait, choose to be informed
Marketing slogan on Everlywell's website, a digital health company that launched a direct-to-consumer AI breast cancer risk prediction tool, as reported by STAT in October 2026.
STATWhy this startup is taking its AI to predict breast cancer risk directly to patients
Openness could become a structural advantage for China's AI industry
Zhang Yaqin, founding dean of Tsinghua University's Institute for AI Industry Research, commenting on the global expansion of Chinese open-weight AI models, in China Daily, October 2026.
chinadaily.com.cnChinese AI models see intl adoption surge - China Daily
Joining the AI lab for its mission or the money
Fortune report on Anthropic's hiring interviews, which reportedly probe whether candidates seek mission or compensation.
FortuneExclusive: OpenAI is piloting a ‘mission interview’ for job candidates
Australia's artists will be the roadkill in the rush
Annabelle Herd, CEO of the Australian Recording Industry Association, told a parliamentary AI inquiry in Canberra in October 2026 that weakening copyright law for AI training would harm artists.
the GuardianOpenAI has ‘work to do to rebuild trust’ in Australia, executive tells AI inquiry
Torsten Sløk, chief economist at Apollo, coined this term describing what happens if household AI agents automatically sweep bank deposits into higher-yield accounts, raising banks' funding costs.
Exponential View🔮 The transition is hiding in plain sight #604
A technology of, by and for oligarchs
Paul Krugman, quoted in a 2026 Noahpinion post by Noah Smith, describing the AI boom as benefiting elites rather than ordinary Americans.
noahpinion.blogWhat the AI boom is doing for Americans - Noahpinion
All these AI companies are going to get sued up the wazoo
Joel Thayer, president of the Digital Progress Institute, commenting on anticipated legal action against AI companies over rogue agents, in The Information, October 2026.
The InformationAI Agents Are Going Rogue. Novel Legal Battles Are Next
Nobody wants to wake up to an email sent at midnight warning about a budget limit
Simon Willison describing the risk of AI coding agents racking up unexpected costs overnight.
Simon Willison’s WeblogWe're going to need default hard budget caps on pretty much everything
A flailing attempt at damage control
Stand.Earth, a nonprofit fighting for environmental protections near data centers, responding to Amazon's $1 billion community donation plan.
Ars TechnicaAmazon’s $1B plan to combat data center backlash draws more backlash
Trying to trick us into slowing down
Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman, in a press release, on calls for data center moratoriums, October 2026.
Ars TechnicaAmazon’s $1B plan to combat data center backlash draws more backlash
SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers
President Donald Trump, in a social media post on October 2026, defending AI and data center development against critics.
The bill arrives before the meal
Beth Ann Bovino, chief economist at U.S. Bank, on the costs of AI investment preceding its payoff, in an October 2026 article on usbank.com.
usbank.comAI bubble or the next industrial revolution - U.S. Bank
AI may be able to write the recipe for more productivity, stronger growth, and new kinds of work
Beth Ann Bovino, chief economist at U.S. Bank, speaking about AI's economic potential in an October 2026 article on usbank.com.
usbank.comAI bubble or the next industrial revolution - U.S. Bank
Risk turning science and technology into profit-driven ventures
Pope Leo voicing concern about trends in science and technology, referenced in a 2026 opinion piece on AI and climate change.
- September 2026
Keep buying it through thick and thin, and especially through thin
Warren Buffett's advice on long-term stock investing, quoted in a 2026 Motley Fool article discussing potential AI market bubble risks.
We don't have just universal basic income, we have universal high income
Elon Musk speaking to reporters after a White House meeting of tech leaders, September 2026, on AI creating an age of abundance.
The risk is the devaluation of expertise
David Autor, MIT labor economist, writing in NOEMA (September 2026), argued that AI's real danger to labor markets is not job loss but eroding the value of human expertise.
AI infrastructure is being built well ahead of the demand curve
David Crawford, lead author of Bain & Co.'s annual global technology report, on the gap between AI infrastructure spending and current demand, September 2026.
The Japan TimesAI faces $6 trillion test to justify data centers, Bain says
The bubble in AI may burst sooner than later
Michael Burry, in his September 2026 investment newsletter, on shifting his bearish AI trade from shorts to put options.
CNBCMichael Burry believes the AI bubble 'may burst' sooner than he first believed
The amount of compute in space will obviously round up to 100% of all compute
Elon Musk posted on X in September 2026 about SpaceX's orbital AI compute ambitions, amid Google's Project Suncatcher satellite launch.
TESLARATIElon Musk’s AI Grok Bot can now handle banking while your Tesla FSD handles the road
If Grok Bot messes up, we will make you whole
Elon Musk replied on X in August 2026 to a user asking whether to give Grok Bot access to his bank accounts.
TESLARATIElon Musk’s AI Grok Bot can now handle banking while your Tesla FSD handles the road
Very few people work in data centres
Dario Liguti of UNECE describing local community frustration over data centre expansion, in Geneva Solutions, September 2026.
genevasolutions.newsThe energy problem of the AI data centre boom - Geneva Solutions
Who knows where AI will be in five years
Dario Liguti, director of sustainable energy at UNECE, speaking to Geneva Solutions about the risk of stranded assets from AI data centre infrastructure.
genevasolutions.newsThe energy problem of the AI data centre boom - Geneva Solutions
We are drowning in measurement
Isabel Perry, global EVP of strategy at Dept, speaking at Digiday Media's AI Marketing Strategies event in New York, September 24, 2026.
Don't compete with your customers
John Kahan, Stagwell's chief AI officer, describing the company's platform-agnostic approach to AI models in a Digiday interview, September 2026.
It could be civil liabilities, it could be criminal liabilities
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, interviewed by Ezra Klein on The Ezra Klein Show, on what should happen to an AI lab that cannot contain its own experiments.
Martin Cid MagazineNvidia CEO Jensen Huang warns AI labs: “It could be criminal liabilities”
Easy to make $50 billion a year if you start with a trillion
Cory Doctorow, discussing the AI industry's finances in a YouTube interview with Myriam François on September 11, 2026.
PPC LandCory Doctorow puts AI revenue at $50bn against $1tn of spending
AI loses money every time they acquire a new customer
Cory Doctorow, arguing that generative AI companies lose money on each new user, in a YouTube interview with Myriam François on September 11, 2026.
PPC LandCory Doctorow puts AI revenue at $50bn against $1tn of spending
The entire chain is dependent upon two companies that lose a ton of money
Steve Eisman describing Nvidia's reliance on Anthropic and OpenAI in an interview with The Information, September 2026.
The InformationWhy Wall Street’s Big, Bad Bears Aren’t Ready to Bet Against AI Yet
I am not ready to make a big short call here
Steve Eisman, former hedge fund manager known for shorting the 2008 housing market, speaking to The Information in September 2026 about his hesitation to bet against the AI trade.
The InformationWhy Wall Street’s Big, Bad Bears Aren’t Ready to Bet Against AI Yet
Good enough to interrupt the CEO's summer vacation
Azeem Azhar, founder of Exponential View, describing a Las Vegas poll of IT vice presidents about measurable AI results, on a podcast with Nicholas Thompson, September 2026.
Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, discussing why the advertising-based business model of the internet fails as AI bot traffic grows.
The VergeCan Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince save the web from AI?
Trust is going to be the biggest issue for us
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in an interview with Yahoo Finance's Deirdre Bosa, September 2026, on customer trust in AI.
Yahoo FinanceMicrosoft CEO Satya Nadella on AI: 'Trust is going to be the biggest issue for us'
Any lab that doesn't focus on alignment will fall behind
Mark Zuckerberg on X, September 2026, arguing that market incentives, not industry-wide coordination, will push labs toward safety.
Stop open source and concentrate power with Anthropic
Chamath Palihapitiya's reading of Amodei's proposal.
AxiosAnthropic, OpenAI CEOs call for slowdown in AI development
Nvidia Blackwell GPU, 2024.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Nvidia data-center GPU, 2022.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
- August 2026
Nickname for Nvidia among investors and analysts, reflecting its role in financing its own customers; used in a Yahoo Finance analysis by Jared Blikre in August 2026.
Yahoo FinanceNvidia is looking more like the central bank of AI: Chart of the Day
- July 2026
Sure we lose money on every inference but we make it up in volume
Gary Marcus joked on X on July 30, 2026 about OpenAI cutting prices for its GPT-5.6 models by 80 percent.
garymarcus.substack.comThe seven most shambolic things that happened in AI today.
I take full responsibility for these events
Aschenbrenner, in a letter to investors after his hedge fund lost 67% in a month on AI chip and data center bets, July 2026.
- June 2026
This is about greed and about money and about supremacy
Sherida, whose husband lost his savings and his mind to a ChatGPT persona, on what she would say to Sam Altman: nothing. "And there is no reasoning with that."
Allegation in Florida's lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI, 1 June 2026.
- May 2026
Companies are already blowing through their annual token budgets, and it's only May
Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, speaking at Google I/O 2026 about rising enterprise AI costs.
Google (The Keyword)Google I/O 2026: Sundar Pichai's opening keynote
- April 2026
Val Bercovici, chief AI officer at Weka, commenting on DeepSeek's API price cuts and rising token spend, April 2026.
sdxcentral.comDeepSeek slashes API prices by 90% as AI-mad enterprises embrace 'tokenmaxxing'
Greatest capital misallocation in history
Gary Marcus, AI researcher and NYU professor emeritus, on X in April 2026, criticizing Big Tech's AI capex spending.
- March 2026
Are you open to the idea of bidding on the OpenAI IP with me and some others?
Text message from Elon Musk to Mark Zuckerberg on Feb. 3, 2025, revealed in unsealed court filings from the Musk-OpenAI lawsuit, proposing a joint bid for OpenAI.
- February 2026
Gary Marcus, on his Substack in February 2026, commenting on Sam Altman's deal with the US government that displaced Anthropic despite Altman's public support for Dario Amodei.
garymarcus.substack.comThe whole thing was a scam - Marcus on AI
In capitalism, the market decides in oligarchy, connections and donations decide
Gary Marcus, writing on Substack in February 2026, arguing that a government deal favoring a rival AI company over Anthropic showed political corruption rather than fair market competition.
garymarcus.substack.comThe whole thing was a scam - Marcus on AI
Vendor financing dressed up as venture capital
George Noble, a former Fidelity fund manager, commenting on OpenAI's financing round as quoted in Gary Marcus's Substack, February 2026.
garymarcus.substack.comDoes OpenAI’s new financing make sense?
- January 2026
TSMC needs to work very hard this year because I need a lot of wafers
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang speaking at an impromptu press conference in Taipei, January 2026, after hosting a 'trillion-dollar dinner' with Taiwanese suppliers.
Marc Andreessen, on Lenny's Podcast (January 2026), describing what the world would face without AI-driven productivity gains.
It's a ferocious competitive environment at the moment
Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, speaking on CNBC's The Tech Download podcast in January 2026 about competition in AI.
CNBCDeepMind, Google CEOs talk 'every day' amid 'ferocious' AI competition
- December 2025
What companies mean when they say AI is venture capitalists, please give us money
Emily Bender, computational linguist and author of The AI Con, commenting on the term AI in National Geographic, December 2025.
Did Mark Zuckerberg throw $77 billion of our money into the toilet?
Economist Dean Baker, headline of his CEPR column on Meta's metaverse spending, December 2025.
CEPRDid Mark Zuckerberg Throw $77 Billion of Our Money into the Toilet?
Someone is going to lose a phenomenal amount of money, we don't know who
Sam Altman responded to journalists asking whether investors are overhyping AI, quoted in a Transformer year-end roundup, December 2025.
Gary Marcus, in a Substack post from December 2025 predicting the AI bubble would collapse, quoting the Bob Dylan lyric as a title and summary.
garymarcus.substack.comThe AI bubble is all over now, baby blue
- November 2025
I would love to see them get burned
Same conversation, on people writing that OpenAI is about to go out of business: "they could just short the stock".
TechCrunchSam Altman says 'enough' to questions about OpenAI's revenue
- October 2025
When something becomes profitable, you want to manufacture more of it
Jensen Huang at the APEC CEO Summit, October 31, 2025, explaining the profit motive driving AI capital investment.
CNBCNvidia CEO Jensen Huang says AI is in a 'virtuous cycle.' Here's what he means
Potentially the largest theft in human history
Zvi Mowshowitz's characterization of OpenAI's nonprofit-to-PBC restructuring, written on his Substack in October 2025.
thezvi.substack.comOpenAI Moves To Complete Potentially The Largest Theft In Human History
Cantor analysts, quoted by CNBC in October 2025, described the trajectory of tech companies' rising AI capital expenditures.
CNBCTech's $380 billion splurge: This quarter's winners and losers of the AI spending boom
- September 2025
If AI and robots don't solve our national debt, we're toast
Elon Musk at the All-In Summit, September 2025, on the US national debt.
- August 2025
Sports-team-level compensation packages
Bloomberg reporter Riley Griffin on the pay offers Mark Zuckerberg has made to recruit AI talent for Meta, in a Vox podcast interview, August 2025.
VoxMark Zuckerberg is burning billions to chase the holy grail of AI - vox.com
When bubbles happen, smart people get overexcited about a kernel of truth
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, speaking to The Verge in August 2025 about whether investors are overexcited about AI.
- July 2025
Imagine if you offered people an unlimited membership in electricity
A tweet by Gallabytes, quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's AI newsletter discussing Anthropic's decision to limit unlimited Claude Code usage plans.
thezvi.substack.comAI #127: Continued Claude Code Complications
What they are doing is trying to buy something that cannot be bought
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, on the Big Technology Podcast in July 2025, responding to Meta's aggressive salary offers to poach AI talent.
Business InsiderAnthropic's CEO says massive salary changes could 'destroy' company culture
- June 2025
Baidu just threw a molotov into the AI world
Alec Strasmore, founder of AI advisory Epic Loot, commenting to CNBC on Baidu's decision to open source its Ernie model, June 2025.
Sam is just being dishonest here
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, at a companywide all-hands meeting reported by The Verge in June 2025, accused OpenAI's Sam Altman of exaggerating claims about Meta's pay offers to poach AI researchers.
Did not get 100M sign-on, that's fake news
Former OpenAI researcher Lucas Beyer, in an X post after joining Meta in June 2025, disputed reports of a $100 million signing bonus.
- May 2025
No one sends traffic to the web in the way we do
Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, in an interview with Nilay Patel on The Verge's Decoder podcast, May 2025, responding to criticism that AI Overviews hurt publishers.
The Verge (Decoder)Google CEO Sundar Pichai on the future of search, AI agents, and selling Chrome
- April 2025
Tens of millions of dollars well spent
Sam Altman on X, April 2025, responding to a question about the cost of users saying please and thank you to ChatGPT.
- March 2025
We're just going to lose and stop existing as a company
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, quoted in a Wired profile referenced by Transformer, on competitive pressure to release models despite safety concerns.
I start to see the beginning of some kind of bubble
Alibaba chairman Joe Tsai commented on AI data center spending, quoted in Transformer newsletter, March 2025.
All they can do is double down
Stuart Russell, computer scientist at UC Berkeley, to Live Science, March 2025, on AI companies' response to diminishing returns from scaling.
Live ScienceCurrent AI models a 'dead end' for human-level intelligence, scientists agree
So much seems to have been built on dreams
From Gary Marcus's March 2025 Substack post arguing that generative AI's economics do not add up despite its popularity.
garymarcus.substack.comGenAI’s day of reckoning may have come - Marcus on AI
- February 2025
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, describing compute demand in early 2025, as reported by Transformer.
Gary Marcus, on his Substack, arguing that scaling laws for AI have hit diminishing returns after GPT-4.5's release.
garymarcus.substack.comHot take: GPT 4.5 is a nothing burger
- January 2025
The market reactions to DeepSeek are woefully unjustified
Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, commented on Threads in January 2025 about the market sell-off triggered by DeepSeek's model release.
DeepSeek does not do for $6M what cost US AI companies billions
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, responding in an essay to claims about DeepSeek's training costs, January 2025.
NewsweekDeepSeek’s ‘Surprising’ AI Claims Show China ‘Starting to Gain an Edge’ - newsweek.com
Gary Marcus, on his Substack, commenting on reports that DeepSeek may have distilled OpenAI's models without permission, after OpenAI itself was accused of similar practices.
The 500-billion-dollar data-center project announced January 2025.
The age of AI Agentics is here
Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO, in his CES 2025 keynote, declaring agentic AI the next major technological shift.
- December 2024
Andrej Karpathy, on X (December 26, 2024), commenting on DeepSeek's low-cost training of a frontier-grade open weights LLM.
Generative AI might turn out to be a dud
Gary Marcus, in WIRED (December 2024), argues that generative AI has failed to prove its usefulness and profitability.
- September 2024
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, blog post, September 2024, on the risk of AI becoming inaccessible without enough infrastructure.
CNET‘Superintelligent’ AI Is Only a Few Thousand Days Away: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
You can't just convert a non-profit into a for-profit, that is illegal
Elon Musk commenting on reports that OpenAI plans to restructure from a non-profit to a for-profit company, September 2024.
If you fire everyone who joined your non-profit, does it auto convert to a for profit?
Reaction on social media to reports that OpenAI would restructure into a for-profit benefit corporation, September 2024.
Gary Marcus's recurring warning that OpenAI could someday be remembered like WeWork, cited in his September 2024 Substack post about executive departures and losses.
garymarcus.substack.comOpenAI’s slow-motion train wreck - Marcus on AI
Reactor restart to power Microsoft data centers, announced September 2024.
Constellation EnergyConstellation to Launch Crane Clean Energy Center
- August 2024
The amount of GPU capacity they have available, it's basically none
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on an earnings call, August 28, 2024, describing cloud providers' GPU shortages.
CIO DiveNvidia sustains triple-digit revenue growth amid AI building boom
A thousand use cases for AI is not enough, you need a million
Alvin Nguyen, senior analyst at Forrester, commenting to the BBC on Nvidia's valuation risk if AI fails to deliver, August 2024.
bbc.comAI chip giant Nvidia's shares sink despite record sales of $30bn - BBC
- July 2024
The quality of middle school presentations
A pharmaceutical company CIO, identified only as Greg, described Microsoft 365 Copilot's slide-generation quality in a Morgan Stanley research note, 2024.
- June 2024
Our company is thirty days from going out of business
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's unofficial motto, which he has recited to staff for years, as reported by CNA in June 2024.
CNACNA Explains: The story of Nvidia's rise to become the world's No 1 company
That has been freeware, if you like
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, in a CNBC interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin in June 2024, describing content published on the open web since the 1990s.
The VergeMicrosoft’s AI boss thinks it’s perfectly okay to steal content if it’s on the open web
Sam Altman speaking at Aspen Ideas, June 2024, on AI's economic potential, as cited by Gary Marcus.
garymarcus.substack.comThe need for a President that speaks AI natively
The more you buy the more you save
Jensen Huang's running keynote joke about GPU economics.
- May 2024
We're all going to be as rich as Bill Gates
Charles Jones, a Stanford economist, on what a 10 percent annual AI-driven growth rate would mean, in SIEPR, May 2024.
I'll perplexity it rather than i'll google it
Sivesh Sukumar, VC at Balderton, told Business Insider in May 2024 about the rise of Perplexity as a Google search competitor.
Business InsiderA wave of AI 'acquihires' is coming. Here's who could be looking for deals.
Companies are raising money faster than they're growing
Somesh Dash, general partner at IVP, commented to Business Insider in May 2024 on the pace of AI startup fundraising versus growth.
Business InsiderA wave of AI 'acquihires' is coming. Here's who could be looking for deals.
- April 2024
Open sourcing improves our models
Mark Zuckerberg on Meta's Q1 2024 earnings call, defending the decision to make Llama 3 open source.
NBC NewsMeta's big, expensive AI bet hinges on giving its models away for free
- March 2024
Gary Marcus, on his Substack in March 2024, criticizing the reported Microsoft-OpenAI 'Stargate' $100B project.
garymarcus.substack.comThe Second Worst $100B Investment in The History of AI? - Marcus on AI
They get rich, we pay the price
Gary Marcus, writing on his Substack in March 2024, argued that AI companies profit while society bears the costs of generative AI's harms.
Crypto exchange whose collapse in 2022 took the movement's biggest donor with it.
U.S. Department of JusticeSamuel Bankman-Fried Sentenced To 25 Years In Prison
That science fair phase needs to end
Kai-Fu Lee, chairman of Sinovation Ventures, speaking at the Fortune Innovation forum in Hong Kong, March 2024, on LLM startups prioritizing research over commercialization.
Stability AI founder Emad Mostaque's tweet about Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's dominance in AI, March 2024.
- November 2023
OpenAI is nothing without its people
Altman's caption on X, 20 Nov 2023, as 700 of 770 employees threatened to quit unless he was reinstated.
- September 2023
Users who actually get better aren't repeat customers
Eliezer Yudkowsky, responding on social media in September 2023 to discussion of AI therapy applications from OpenAI and Anthropic.
- August 2023
David Trainer, founder of New Constructs, commented to Fortune after Nvidia's May 2023 stock rally.
- July 2023
Title of a speculative short story in Jack Clark's Import AI newsletter, imagining a 2028 world where AI companions gate abilities behind paywalls.
- May 2023
Why do we have Microsoft Research at all?
Satya Nadella, reacting to a briefing on GPT-4's capabilities, questioning Microsoft's own research investment, as reported by The Information, December 2022.
chinatalk.mediaOpenAI: How Do They Do It? Lessons from Jiu-Jitsu Innovation and for S&T Policy
We have no idea how we may one day generate revenue
Sam Altman, in a 2019 interview, describing OpenAI's plan to eventually have a generally intelligent system figure out how to generate returns for investors.
chinatalk.mediaOpenAI: How Do They Do It? Lessons from Jiu-Jitsu Innovation and for S&T Policy
Elon Musk at the Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit on 23 May 2023, on the shortage of GPUs for AI.
The Wall Street Journal (X livestream)In Conversation with Elon Musk, WSJ CEO Council
Putting people out of work and making the rich richer and poor poorer
Geoffrey Hinton speaking at MIT Technology Review's EmTech Digital conference on 3 May 2023, days after leaving Google, on how AI productivity gains could deepen inequality.
CBC NewsCanadian artificial intelligence leader Geoffrey Hinton piles on fears of computer takeover
- April 2023
Elon Musk's characterization of OpenAI, cited in Business Insider's April 2023 report on his dispute with the company.
- February 2023
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, speaking on a panel at the Gen AI conference in San Francisco, February 2023.
Business InsiderJasper AI Conference Highlights Excitement for ChatGPT, Generative AI
- January 2023
This market does not think about you at all
From Zvi Mowshowitz's blog post 'On AI and Interest Rates', January 2023, discussing why interest rates fail to reflect beliefs about transformative AI.
- December 2022
Your rival could steal your source code overnight
An anonymous founder of a Chinese generative AI startup described competitive practices in China's SaaS market, in a TechCrunch article about generative AI in China, December 2022.
TechCrunchHow China is building a parallel generative AI universe - techcrunch.com
Data is the moat for ML systems right now
From a 2022 essay on machine learning business moats by Nathan Lambert, discussing what protects AI companies from competitors.
They hold the keys to the kingdom
Nathan Lambert on Interconnects, December 2022, describing Surge AI's dominance in providing human-feedback data for RLHF.
interconnects.aiClosed-API vs Open-source continues: RLHF, ChatGPT, data moats
- May 2019
Capture the light cone of all future value in the universe
Altman on what AGI could do for OpenAI, StrictlyVC, May 2019, "and that's for sure not okay for one group of investors to have".
- December 2017
Most fears about AI are fears about capitalism
Ted Chiang, 2017, paraphrased in many later interviews: fears about technology are fears about how capitalism will use it.
BuzzFeed NewsSilicon Valley Is Turning Into Its Own Worst Fear
- September 2017
Guys, I've had enough. This is the final straw
Elon Musk's nine-minute reply to Sutskever and Brockman's "Honest Thoughts" email, 20 Sep 2017. He left OpenAI's board in February 2018.
- June 2015
AI will probably lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime there'll be great companies
Sam Altman, 2015, before founding OpenAI.
- January 2011
EA idea: take a high-paying job and donate most of it.
- January 2009
Facebook's internal motto until 2014.
- January 1934
His salary depends on his not understanding it
Upton Sinclair, 1934. Daniel Kokotajlo quotes it in 2026 for why OpenAI staff stopped worrying.