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Comment by sethops1 | Hacker News Reader

There is no "all", that's the point. There is no pot of gold at the end of the AI rainbow.

There is some gold, but it’s a fairly small amount compared to the ATM discussed by AI companies (basically software generation, software security, audio transcripts, translation, image processing, image generation, search, etc). So it’s not like there won’t be an AI industry in the future but it won’t be absolutely everywhere the way the AI boosters are projecting. Inference will be a low margin industry, training will be capex constrained and likely low margin too. And some services on top will have decent margins. But nothing like the datacenters full of PHDs Amodei and Altman are dreaming about.

Just like any other technology

There's a lot of money changing hands, at least that's a spoil isn't it? And if the music stops, someone is going to end up holding it.

Well a lot of money is being spent, but is a lot of money being made?

With circular deals it’s hard to tell.

NVIDIA, Micron, SK Hynix, and other hardware manufacturers, and also hyperscalers are the ones making the hard cash (unless you’re Oracle, that company is more than fucked)

They’re also at the centre of a lot of circular deals, nvidia in particular is notorious for it and still doing it.

From last month: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-27/nvidia-s-...

Or from 2025: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/15/a-guide-to-1-trillion-worth-...

I know, but NVIDIA is also the main beneficiary from that whole scheme, what they get out of it is actual cash. They hyperscalers have a more complicated role though

They also get sales, which prop up the extraordinary share price. That seems to be the main point of the circular deals.

Nvidia is basically the house loaning money to the gamblers. They don’t care if the gamblers win or lose. They just care that people keep playing.

When somebody's spending someone else is making money.

With circular deals it’s hard to tell.

If nobody is gaining, nobody is losing.

Even if topline is being artificially inflated for marketing reasons, if there's a pile of offsetting contracts, I would imagine there's always a risk of a differential in conditions that causes them to resolve asymmetrically. If company A and company B both have 100T$ of contracts with each other and 1T market cap each, it's hard to actually make them inert, any slight miscalc and one company goes bankrupt and its assets go to the winner.

Hard to imagine a perfectly identical offsetting transaction let alone triangular or circular.

Nvidia and constructions companies certainly are. And a lot of middle men...

Except when it's that same someone else's money being spent.

Most tech revolutions end up making a fair bit of money for successful businesses.

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