Ask HN: Where in the dot com boom is AI today?

By quite a lot of objective measures, we're at the same level or above the top of dot com bubble.

There is a great quote from the CEO of Sun Microsystems at the time, describing the bubble:

"At 10 times revenues, to give you a 10-year payback, I have to pay you 100% of revenues for 10 straight years in dividends. That assumes I can get that by my shareholders. That assumes I have zero cost of goods sold, which is very hard for a computer company. That assumes zero expenses, which is really hard with 39,000 employees. That assumes I pay no taxes, which is very hard. And that assumes you pay no taxes on your dividends, which is kind of illegal. And that assumes with zero R&D for the next 10 years, I can maintain the current revenue run rate. Now, having done that, would any of you like to buy my stock at $64? Do you realize how ridiculous those basic assumptions are? You don’t need any transparency. You don’t need any footnotes. What were you thinking?"

The company with the biggest valuation in the US (Nvidia) has a price to earnings ratio of almost 60 and price to sales ratio of 30. That's where we are in the cycle.

The problem of the dot com boom was valuations on the stock market. You really cant point to the same problem occurring today. Nvidia is probably valued 2-3x higher than they ought to be, but not really anyone else; and its understandable why they are doing great. Rocm is trash compared to cuda.

There are no "pets.com" type ridiculous valuations.

I dont see the AI bubble at all.

Late 1999 - Early 2000

It’s 1997. The executives in the boardroom have heard about this AI thing and have tasked the managerial class to make sure they have an AI plan to execute for FY2025 and FY2026. Shareholder Rights Activists are demanding that companies have an AI strategy. There has yet to be a Netscape moment though the ever larger capital raises by OpenAI and others may be the Netscape moment. Money is pouring in even though there’s little measurable benefit yet.

There will be a couple of tells when the bubble is popping: the Shareholder Rights Activists will flip to demanding companies execute the executives who implemented the wasteful AI strategies that they demanded, and “AI” companies will take over all of the ad slots for the SuperB*wl.