this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2026
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The immediate catalyst, it seems, is an intensifying focus on capex, or capital expenditures. Microsoft revealed that its spending surged 66% to $37.5 billion in the latest quarter, even as growth in its Azure cloud business cooled slightly. Even more concerning to analysts, however, was a new disclosure that approximately 45% of the company’s $625 billion in remaining performance obligations (RPO)—a key measure of future cloud contracts—is tied directly to OpenAI, the company revealed after reporting earnings Wednesday afternoon. (Microsoft is both a major investor in and a provider of cloud-computing services to OpenAI.)

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[–] Jankatarch@lemmy.world 16 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I miss consistent weather.

The snow keeps melting

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 20 points 6 hours ago

A company with a $3.2T market share. The game is made up and the points don't matter.

[–] anakin78z@lemmy.world 48 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

"market reaction suggests that more capital isn’t going to be a viable substitute for a business model anymore."

Time to find the next vague thing that investors can pour trillions into without really knowing what it is or does.

[–] Pringles@sopuli.xyz 13 points 2 hours ago

It'll be quantum computing. Since the last hype around it, a lot of progress has been made to the point that quantum computers are actually becoming useful, since error correction is now mostly resolved.

[–] purrtastic@lemmy.nz 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Robotics. It will be a pivot to robotics.

[–] elucubra@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 hour ago

Which will create a labor boom, to operate the robots, a la Tesla

[–] mrnobody@reddthat.com 4 points 4 hours ago

Don't forget, though, it does that one thing for that one reason I forgot already as I typed it... But its still good, clearly!

[–] empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 160 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

Please fucking crash I want to be able to buy basic computing hardware again

[–] FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 27 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

Since OpenAI just announced the possibility of bankruptcy, it's definitely coming. It's going to be wild for whichever idiot in charge at MS to go down in history as the man who ruined one of the most powerful and integral companies on earth.

[–] zqwzzle@lemmy.ca 21 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

Wait, where? I wanna read and savour it.

[–] FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 14 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

idk, it was late last year that Sam said he expected OpenAI revenue to grow steeply, but also that if it doesn't then the company could go bankrupt by 2027 at the latest.

[–] gustofwind@lemmy.world 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

lol they havnt even put the ads in yet

[–] FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 7 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (2 children)

They don't have a product with any actual value or use cases. The ads aren't going to reverse that. If it were that simple then they would have been able to make profit with their subscription model.

[–] Baggie@lemmy.zip 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

How would that even work as well? The ads will be in the website, doesn't most stuff run through API calls? If you force everyone to start paying per call, the business model falls apart instantly.

[–] Wispy2891@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago

API calls are already only paid, no?

I'm guessing the ads will be embedded in the answers of the free users (like: it will add to the prompt something like "and don't forget to plug the sponsor, ridge wallet")

[–] gustofwind@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I think we’re quite a long way off before they actually crash and burn, if they ever do. We have no idea how much money the ads will inject and they also receive significant government contracts and will probably get a lot more going forward

If the market can pretend Tesla is worth so much i think it can easily sustain AI for many years

[–] krashmo@lemmy.world 7 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

It's already been several years. Tesla had an actual product that people wanted. Yes, they've been doing their best of late to torpedo their market share and brand name but at one point they were doing what they set out to do. Open AI has never done what they said they would do.

[–] gustofwind@lemmy.world 6 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Kinda but also not entirely. I know a lot of people who use ChatGPT and other AIs at work and it does basically exactly what they want and just gets better

I’m not a proponent but the naysayer doomers are almost as wrong as the tech evangelists

Is it overvalued? Sure

Is it worthless? Absolutely not

[–] krashmo@lemmy.world 4 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

That's cool. I have yet to find a use case for AI. Am I doing it wrong or are they just bad with computers?

[–] Luckyfriend222@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago

I am with gustofwind here. I use AI to help me quickly draft up mindless policies, then read through it and edit it where needed. It is a lot faster than any typing I can do.

I also use it to help me find configs for stuff I deploy, but I make sure it attaches the source link for me, so I can read the original source docs and keep a sane approach to what I am doing.

Again, I also think it is way overvalued, but to say it has not helped me build successful stuff over the past 2 years would be a lie. My 2c

[–] Randynippletwist@lemmynsfw.com -1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Yes, why do you care about the pointless corporate crap you produce . Ai slop is the desired result you are just letting your pride get in the way.

[–] gustofwind@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Products and services have been dropping in quality well before ai slop

You overestimate the quality of acceptable work in many industries. AI and a little human editing and oversight is perfectly capable of producing legitimate work product.

The real problem is capitalism driving everything to shit and that really has nothing to do with ai influenced workflows

[–] myserverisdown@lemmy.world 4 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

I went from Windows laptop and Netflix and Hulu to a Linux desktop for a home server running Immich, Mealie, Jellyfin, and the Arr suite in docker containers. All proxied on Cloudflare for remote access. I would never have been able to do that without the use of ChatGPT. I had no knowledge of software development, Linux, networking, etc at all. If you know how to query, AI can be a huge aid in learning. It's helping me brush up on my Italian right now too since I haven't spoken it in 5 years.

[–] gustofwind@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago

Tbh it’s not much different than search engines. You need to learn how to use them and when it’s appropriate to do so…it’s basically a skill issue 🤷‍♀️

Reminds me of when search engines first arrived and we were taught very early in school how library research works and then when to use digital academic databases vs regular search engines or just hit the books.

And yeah tech support is a great use case and you can just use the Gemini links that send you to the Reddit threads where the information came from to verify it.

I feel like if you’re minimally responsible it’s pretty hard to have AI backfire on you

[–] krashmo@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

That's cool. I did all of that without AI coming from a similar place as you. AI didn't open up a new path for you, it just showed you a path that already existed, which isn't any different from what a regular search engine can do. There was nothing stopping you from finding that path on your own except your unwillingness to look.

[–] howrar@lemmy.ca 2 points 57 minutes ago

Willingness to look is a pretty important factor. LLMs reduce the personal cost incurred to look up information, similar to how search engines saved us from having to go to the library for every question we had.

[–] Nikelui@lemmy.world 1 points 55 minutes ago* (last edited 55 minutes ago)

They presented to you a reasonable use case (assisted learning) and your response was "lol, you're just lazy. Do it on your own. I did it, so can you".

I am in a similar position, networking is Martian to me and if I search guides on how to do stuff, it's full of people that go "just use X to do a reverse proxy", as if I have 200h of experience under my belt. I'd rather have a chatbot explain to me like I am 5 in some cases.

[–] Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Doubt that'll happen for a few mor years unfortunately. I can't imagine most of the hardware made for AI datacenters is compatible with consumer stuff :/

[–] zurohki@aussie.zone 5 points 4 hours ago

A lot of it hasn't actually been made, though. The AI companies have put in orders for future production. That future capacity can be redirected with a wave of a pen.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 26 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

OpenAI has made about $1.4 trillion in commitments to procure both the energy and compute it needs to fuel its operations. But its revenue barely crossed $20 billion in 2025.

Investors are increasingly critical of what they describe as “circular” deals involving the industry’s biggest players. On Wednesday evening, The Information reported that OpenAI is seeking a fresh $60 billion in funding from heavyweights like Nvidia and Amazon. However, market reaction suggests that more capital isn’t going to be a viable substitute for a business model anymore. “Maybe Oracle stock got way ahead of fundamentals, and now the market’s saying, ‘All right, show me, I want to see it,’” Eric Diton, president of the Wealth Alliance, told**Yahoo Finance.

[–] GarbadgeGoober@feddit.org 4 points 3 hours ago

Thanks for sharing, really insightful.

In my personal opinion after being also responsible in AI for our company, I do not see how it will be profitable for them.

For example Microsoft Copilot license, costs 30$/month, but a lot of things I can do with it a free Chatbot can do too.

It definitely has it strengths and use cases and I am sure it will not go away. But it is not the way the market it as a full AI, it just generates answers with the highest probability. I cannot see it developing from there to the real AI.

I think this year will be really interesting to watch all the AI companies, especially Oracle as they have to refinance a lot. If one falls it will send them into to a spiral, the big companies will be fine, but I am sure they will cut their funding of OpenAI.

But who knows could be the other way around and OpenAI finds anything new to make them more profitable.

[–] UnspecificGravity@piefed.social 58 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

The real lesson here is that if you are a company that was founded on stupid imaginary bullshit your investors are comfortable with investing in stupid imaginary bullshit and it isn't going to hurt your price.

When you are a legacy tech company whose investors expect you to actually make products that you sell for money, they don't like to hear that blew every penny you had on fucking magic beans.

[–] Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 9 hours ago

This would be like Big Oil investing in Enron, no?

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 32 points 9 hours ago

and so it does

[–] redbrick@lemmy.world 18 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I hate AI...it never was AI. It was useless in all my tests.

[–] Earthman_Jim@lemmy.zip 4 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

The gig was up for me when I tried to get it to play dungeon master in a game of DnD. It would start out great, but eventually it would forget what we were doing and instead of giving me choices it started just telling me the story of me playing dnd and it would stop giving me options. This would happen about 6 minutes into playing, or 3 or 4 "turns", and that's when I realized the incredible memory sync it is if it can't reference instructions given moments ago. A newer model won't fix that.

At the end of the day it's complex predictive text that amounts to a Rorschach test.

[–] Wispy2891@lemmy.world 4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

You need to do a custom program if you want to do that. I mean a traditional program where variables are stored properly.

The models have no memory at all, at every question it starts from scratch, so the clients are just "pretending" it has a memory by simply including all previous questions and answers in your last query. You reply "ok", but the model is getting thousands of words with all the history.

Because each question becomes exponentially expensive, at some point it starts to prune old stuff. It either truncates the content (for example the completely useless meta ai chatbot that WhatsApp forced down the throat loses context after 2-3 questions) or it uses the model itself to have a condensed resume of past interactions, but this is how it hallucinates.

Otherwise it will cost like $1 per question and more

[–] Earthman_Jim@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

Which kind of illustrates the fundamental flaw right? Videogame companies have spent decades creating replayable DnD esc experiences that are far more memory efficient and cost effective. They already kind of do it the best way. AI can assist, and things like the machine learning behind the behaviors of the NPCs in Arc Raiders for example is very cool, but as you said, you need a custom program... which is what a video game is, so I guess my point is I don't see the appeal in re-inventing it through sort of automated reverse engineering.

[–] postscarce@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 48 minutes ago

LLMs could theoretically give a game a lot more flexibility, by responding dynamically to player actions and creating custom dialogue, etc. but, as you say, it would work best as a module within an existing framework.

I bet some of the big game dev companies are already experimenting with this, and in a few years (maybe a decade considering how long it takes to develop a AAA title these days) we will see RPGs with NPCs you can actually chat with, which remain in-character, and respond to what you do. Of course that would probably mean API calls to the publisher’s server where the custom models are run, with all of the downsides that entails.

[–] hellothere@sh.itjust.works 45 points 11 hours ago

Oh no....

Anyway.

[–] UnspecificGravity@piefed.social 25 points 10 hours ago

Wait.

You mean that dedicating the majority of their business to buying things from themselves has not proven to be a sound strategy in the eyes of investors?

[–] unnamed1@feddit.org 36 points 11 hours ago

So it begins

[–] SinningStromgald@lemmy.world 28 points 10 hours ago

The AI ouroboros if finally consuming itself.

[–] TachyonTele@piefed.social 28 points 10 hours ago

Sucks to suck

[–] veeesix@lemmy.ca 14 points 9 hours ago

Looks like that magic well of social permission is about to dry up.

[–] ell1e@leminal.space 7 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)