The real story will be when companies report valuation losses from their investments in AI companies after the bubble bursts, or even deflates a bit.
Expect lots of hand wavy “non-GAAP” numbers pushed by leadership trying to gloss over their failed AI investments.
That’s earnings call speak for “If you ignore the pile of your money we lost with bad AI investment decisions, we’ve had a good quarter. Moving on…”
Most of these data centers are built with special purpose vehicles to make the balance sheet look better. Imagine the gnashing of teeth when those get written down
Yes… a lot of this is pretty hidden on the balance sheets but eventually GAAP catches up one way or another.
I am surprised and glad that journalists are reporting on this. OpenAI is the hinge in the whole AI bubble, and it has every incentive to keep its financials private if it is not very flattering. So, thats the place to look for funny business - specially given their outlandish and provocative announcements of 16GW of datacenter buildouts which defies economic sense and demands more scrutiny.