Ed Zitron: The AI bubble runs on made-up annualized revenue and capacity numbers
GaryMarcus · x · 2026-10-14
Ed Zitron's 29-minute read 'Annualized Enron Rate' (amplified by Gary Marcus) argues the AI bubble is inflated by fabricated numbers that journalism failed to vet: OpenAI's annualized ARR extrapolates single months into years; the claim that Anthropic could earn $1.3B extra from a Louisiana campus launching one month early rests on a ten-month-old neocloud CEO's guess of $50–75M revenue per MW-year vs. $10–15M build cost; and claims of Anthropic reaching 5GW capacity by end-2026 (from 1.5GW) show no evidence even 1GW exists to buy. Meanwhile NVIDIA plans $670B+ in GPU sales next year on top of $500B+ already sold, with $800B invested mostly by people who don't understand the underlying datacenter economics.
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