Echoes of 1999: fiber glut left 97% unused, but hoarded $30k AI chips won't flood the market
aakashgupta · x · 2026-10-28
The author revisits the 1999 telecom bubble: $90B spent burying fiber over four years, only 2.6% in use by 2001 per Merrill Lynch, capacity prices down 70% in two years, 60+ bankruptcies by 2003 — and Google quietly bought dead cable for pennies, powering much of 2010s YouTube/Netflix. Bay Area rents cratered too (San Jose: $2,300→$1,400/month). Today looks similar with Google, Amazon and Microsoft hoarding $30,000 AI chips. But unlike graphics cards, these chips can't even plug into a monitor — the quoted fantasy of $125 GPUs and $900 rents in 2029 won't materialize from an AI bust.
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