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Tech companies are firing everyone to "fund AI", spending money on each other

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Re: Tech companies are firing everyone to "fund AI", spending money on each other

#61

Post by nradov »

testdelacc1 wrote: post #25
cjonas wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then Nvidia is turning around and investing back in the AI companies so they can in turn buy Nvidia chips...

At least investing in companies that will buy Nvidia makes sense somewhat, even if it feels dodgy. What possible sense does it make for Nvidia to invest in a maker of telecom equipment (Nokia) with no public plan, and the value of the investment jumps 30% as soon as it’s announced? It’s not like call routing needs to be “AI enabled” or they’re putting Nvidia GPUs in their custom silicon. Feels like Nvidia has too muc…

Nokia has a public plan to build 6G network infrastructure. I'm not sure how realistic it is.

https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-nokia-ai-telecommu...

Re: Tech companies are firing everyone to "fund AI", spending money on each other

#62

Post by ailegalbeagle »

Herring wrote: post #53
ailegalbeagle wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> general economic decline I'm not seeing it, do you have any proof you can offer that your statement is true?

https://www.ey.com/en_us/insights/strategy/macroeconomics/us... https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/adv/insights/... EY forecasts 1.7% GDP growth, most of which is AI (~1.1% according to jpmorgan). The broader economy is facing headwinds (policy uncertainty, tariffs, etc etc).

The signs point to a mixed picture, not a general economic decline.

Re: Tech companies are firing everyone to "fund AI", spending money on each other

#63

Post by ailegalbeagle »

ailegalbeagle wrote: post #36
cjonas wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then Nvidia is turning around and investing back in the AI companies so they can in turn buy Nvidia chips...

Which is perfectly legal, correct?

I'll answer my own comment, yes, it is legal. If there are any known issues indicating wrong doing, report it to the DOJ or FTC.

Re: Tech companies are firing everyone to "fund AI", spending money on each other

#64

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

jonway wrote: post #29
alephnerd wrote: post #11

Doesn't pass the smell test as someone who has been on boards that made these decisions. This would be like saying cloud spend was circular because F1000 tech companies represent the majority of cloud spend from a revenue perspective, but tend to sell or partner with those same organizations. For example, AWS and Zscaler, or GCP and Broadcom. Reality is, a lot of product lines were formed or overhired with little-to-…

I dunno, it doesn't pass the smell test that for a decade everyone was adding useless products and now in '25 they're all having their come-to-jesus. I also don't that buy everyone is firing to spend on AI either.

It's more that they intend to spend loads and loads on capital spend (for AI). Therefore, they should lay people off to keep margin constant. Now clearly they believe that the capex is worth it, but they're mostly trying to manage their share price.

Re: Tech companies are firing everyone to "fund AI", spending money on each other

#65

Post by matwood »

ailegalbeagle wrote: post #41
dragonwriter wrote: post #6

We’re in a general economic decline masked, in some key aggregate measures, by the AI bubble. That’s the reason for the job cuts. Shuffling money around between AI adjacent companies may (but I doubt it) be enough to keep the AI bubble going through the downturn, in which case stockholders in those key companies manage to ride it out without pain, and executives too because they serve their constituency well. More li…

> general economic decline I'm not seeing it, do you have any proof you can offer that your statement is true?

Unemployment is the highest since 2021:

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate

Consumer staples have seen almost a 20% decline in EPS YoY:

https://ycharts.com/indicators/sandp_500_consumer_staples_ea...

A specific example is Chipotle. It could certainly be company specific, but could also highlight a consumer trend.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/30/chipotle-stock-falls-after-q...

Still, most analysts attributed the slowdown to industrywide challenges, not company-specific issues that Chipotle needs to address. Unemployment, increased student loan repayments and slower real wage growth accounting for inflation are weighing on consumers’ spending, according to Boatwright.

Re: Tech companies are firing everyone to "fund AI", spending money on each other

#66

Post by Herring »

ailegalbeagle wrote: post #62
Herring wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.ey.com/en_us/insights/strategy/macroeconomics/us... https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/adv/insights/... EY forecasts 1.7% GDP growth, most of which is AI (~1.1% according to jpmorgan). The broader economy is facing headwinds (policy uncertainty, tariffs, etc etc).

The signs point to a mixed picture, not a general economic decline.

EY says

> Overall, underlying economic momentum remained steady in the first half of the year despite mounting policy headwinds. But with the impact of tariffs and policy uncertainty becoming increasingly visible, slower US growth and higher inflation are still on the horizon.

Trump inherited a good economy and set it towards decline. If that's still not clear stay tuned, there's more to come.

Re: Tech companies are firing everyone to "fund AI", spending money on each other

#67

Post by NaomiLehman »

verzali wrote: post #23
simonw wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found John Gruber's roundup of tech company profits (not revenue) interesting: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/10/30/apple-q4-result... - Google (a.k.a. Alphabet): $35B - Microsoft: $27.7B - Apple: $27.5B - Nvidia: $26.4B - Amazon: $21.5B

Is it a coincidence that 3 of 5 are so close?

Yes, completely different revenue sources.

Re: Tech companies are firing everyone to "fund AI", spending money on each other

#68

Post by NaomiLehman »

scotty79 wrote: post #46
cjonas wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then Nvidia is turning around and investing back in the AI companies so they can in turn buy Nvidia chips...

Nvidia is basically allowing some of its clients to pay with partial ownership of their companies instead of with cash for the chips they want, because there's simply not enough cash in them for the lofty goals lots of people think are achievable.

that's kind of like writing options. if you think about it, it's not that crazy.

Re: Tech companies are firing everyone to "fund AI", spending money on each other

#70

Post by rglover »

mjr00 wrote: post #35
CharlieDigital wrote: post #22

I rarely post comments on LinkedIn, but I saw some of the dumbest content today and felt compelled to leave a response: > Just met a founder who fired his entire team because he was able to individually beat their entire productivity with Claude Code My only thought when I read this is that this absolutely embarrassing...for founder who wasted dozens of hours recruiting, qualifiying, interviewing, onboarding, and tra…

> It just came across as some of the most small-brain thinking that anyone would then "Like" this content and not see it for what it is: idiotic management and leadership and just complete lack of basic foresight. It's not even that. It's just straight up lying . The most generous interpretation is that his "team" was Fiverr contractors who were working part-time for $10/hour. More likely is he never had a team to be…

100% this. The culture has shifted toward normalizing lying to such a degree that now, most people will stare you in the eye and lie to your face for the sake of self-preservation. Low-trust is now the default, high-trust is a rare luxury. Most people are just demi-Barnum's now (and if they're not, their brain has been so utterly cooked by the spectacle that they may as well be running a scam relative to the lack of actual value they produce).
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