Premium: What If...We're In An AI Bubble? (Part 1)
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A deep-dive opinion piece arguing that the AI industry is in a speculative bubble propped up by subsidized pricing, magical thinking, and unsustainable economics. Key claims include: most AI products are sold at massive losses via flat-rate subscriptions that hide true token costs; GitHub Copilot users routinely burned 10-30x their subscription value; Microsoft's shift to token-based billing on June 1, 2026 will trigger a cascade forcing other AI companies to do the same; enterprises are burning through token budgets without clear ROI; and OpenAI/Anthropic revenues are artificially inflated by exploratory, directionless spending. The piece uses a Marvel 'What If?' framing to explore scenarios like token-based billing killing consumer AI apps, organizations cutting AI spend, and data centers not actually coming online — arguing these interconnected failures could trigger a broader market collapse.
Table of contents
In Today’s Where’s Your Ed At Premium…What If The AI Industry Moves To Entirely Token-Based Billing?Token-Based Billing Will Force A Reckoning With The Actual Value of AIConsumer and Prosumer AI Apps Moving To Token-Based Billing Will DieWhat If Organizations Can’t Afford To Keep Spending On AI?What If The AI Capacity Crunch Never Ends (And Data Centers Aren’t Getting Built)?What If CoreWeave Can’t Keep Up With Its Capacity Demands?What If Hyperscalers Can’t Build Data Centers Very Fast?What If Hyperscalers Have Warehouses of Uninstalled GPUs?What If Hyperscalers Write Off A Large Chunk of GPUs?What If Data Center Construction Demand Collapses?What Actually Bursts A Bubble?Coming Up In Part 2…Sort: