Hacker News
The Register: Meta's Free Cash Flow Fell From $8.5B to Under $1B as Four of Five Big Tech Names Sank on Earnings
Brandon Vigliarolo's August 3 piece argues the AI bubble is already deflating unnoticed, citing Meta's free cash flow collapsing year-over-year from $8.5 billion to under $1 billion on data-center spend, Apple dropping 10% on component cost warnings, and IBM losing more value in a day than at any point since Black Monday 1987. It notes OpenAI and Anthropic together generate about $20 billion annually while being valued on speculative future capacity, and cites Corey Quinn on earnings accounting that inflates revenue figures. The practical advice for builders is unglamorous: measure actual token consumption rather than advertised per-token prices, and prefer smaller targeted models. 144 comments on HN.
↳ Follow the thread