The AI bubble will pop within the next couple of months. It's pretty interesting, I wonder if we've ever seen an economic bubble so clearly before it comes to an end.
this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2026
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Five companies owe more money than their balance sheets admit. A Nikkei analysis of financial footnotes at Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle found $1.65 trillion in off-balance-sheet obligations tied to AI infrastructure — binding, must-pay commitments parked in the fine print
Good thing I don't invest in these big names, not only because of overvaluation but also because of corruption. My mom told me to be careful with investing because companies go bankrupt but i kinda dismissed her concerns because I am thinking that the days of Enron accounting magic is over. But it looks like it's still alive and well. Although I doubt executives will be held accountable.
I don't know why, but I read this as "Five Guys" and thought holy shit I didn't realize a burger company could be so broke. No wonder their prices are so high!
I am actually thinking ask of these companies imploding would be good for the human race.
Imagine a solid hard reset on the internet? Yes please.
Will this fuck me over yes, but that will be temporary
Everything is temporary when you think about it
Life is just a temporary break from death.
This shit led to the Great Depression… I guess it’ll be a Greater Depression, just on figures alone.
C'mon! With Trump in charge, it has to be The Greatest Depression!
"Yes, this is The Greatest Depression. Nobody has ever seen anything like it. Even the best economists, very smart people, they say to me 'Donald, Mr President, who could know?' Nobody could have known this would happen, but they tell me it was caused by Biden. Or Obama. I've also asked the FBI to check Hillary's emails and Hunter's laptop."
"They said it could never happen. It could never be done. But I did it. First one in history to trigger such a great depression. The greatest depression."
great depression led to a ww2, is there please some chance to please not start ww3 please
Unlike ww2, ww3 would not be a boon to production or the economy
Supply chains would be the first target, like how pulling the plug on rare earth metals is the goto now, and how much can be fully and entirely made at home?
We'd be sitting around scratching our asses wishing we had any form of modern appliance before long. Planes, ships, cars, generators, terbines, computers, microchips would cease manufacture without a comprehensive functioning global supply chain
Fuel, oil, fertiliser would be cut off for most countries
Without an incredible stockpile, most countries probably couldn't sustain any world war
Yeah. Revolution now. We need to fucking build a parallel internationalist power structure and just freeze out the billionaires from the economy. Fuck the UN, we make our own with black flags and snooker. It's up to us to define what it means to be an adult.
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Oh boy I can't wait to see the future of every person under 65 and with a net worth below $100 million get basically vaporized from space. I can't wait to be the bailout source for this... Although I don't think there's enough money in existence to bail this one out.
They're such money pits that they can't be bailed out - give them a hundred billion dollars and they'll be back next month for more.
They aren't a functioning business that just needs help getting back to profitability or help with some sort term crisis, they take hundreds of billions and set it on fire.
And deciding whether to bail them out is going to be like the onions video on America's money hole where the debate is how much money to throw into the hole to be burned instead of whether they should do it at all.
MY FATHER WORKED TWO JOBS SO HE WOULD HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO THROW IN THE MONEY HOLE
Don't even talk about bailouts, it's totally unacceptable this time. These companies ARE NOT essential, and are not too big to fail.
Their debts are by Venture Capitalist investors, and by billionaires from the dot com bom. They have the money to fail.
This time we let them fail.
I WANT TO SEE REPO MEN AND BANK OFFICIALS MARCHING INTO MANSIONS TO RECLAIM THE MONEY.
Let some of these assholes live in trailer parks.
The current administration is claiming AI is absolutely essential to our national security, scientific research, energy, and everything else. This is all being done by political appointees who know next to nothing in general, and even less about the history and current state of "AI". Being ordered by people who do not care about wasting taxypayer money or running up absurd deficits. Bailout incoming.
I totally agree with you and I think this time there really isn't a way to bail out AI companies or every other company that's too big to fail during the poly crisis. No matter what irresponsible shit the elites get up to fundamentally we're the ones that get fucked though even if they can't extract enough blood from us to nationalize the losses.
The issue is that they became part of everyone's 401k so the bootlickers and greedy fucks in Congress will tell us they're 100% essential because if they fail you lose your retirement.
I hate this system... Redistribution of wealth for the rich, rugged individualism for the pleb.
The current retirement structure is gambling and exploiting labor. I’m sorry but it’s the only way to fix it. The people who bought into it need to suffer, too.
They aren’t even public companies yet. They are not a part of everyone’s 401ks.
MS, AMZN, Oracle, & NVDA were around before this, and will exist even when the bubble pops. Literally zero reason for a bailout.
There is a very good chance that Oracle doesn't survive if OpenAI tanks.
I hope Larry Ellison has to sell off his media companies and still has a heart attack in the end. He funds Israel.
Larry Ellison is an even bigger son of a bitch than your standard Israel funder.
Not just content with supporting a genocide, he wants to control all media and human behavior.
Not even to protect his collaborators, but because there’s money in it.
Larry Ellison belongs in prison.
So you're telling me AI is going to bring positive change to the world?!
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*jail
Wait.....too big to fail meant that they're supposed to be important to the CITIZENS??? Fuck that! All these banks and mortgage lenders and automotive industry leaders have all been bailed out as too big to fail.
I never took that to mean that they provide value. I just took it to mean "fuck you peasants, we're big business, and therefore fuck you! Money please! Money me now!"
If I'd have known they meant it was for OUR benefit, I'd have called bullshit 20 years ago.
Ready to reclaim some land
https://www.hgcsa.org/oracle-ceo-larry-ellison-buying-hawaiian-island-of-lanai/
with a net worth below $100 million
Far fewer than you'd think, once hyperinflation kicks in.
You'll be lucky if you can buy gum for less than $100M at the rate we're climbing.
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This is why they want to get into your 401(k)s & pension funds. Don't let them.
Oh, I won't.
Mostly because I'm 42, and have no 401k, or pension.
I'm clutching my 10k tightly. They won't be getting my future 2 weeks of groceries!
Would be interesting to include anthropic, openai etc in this list
They're not public and aren't forced to report these numbers. But yeah the amount of hidden debt in AI is much higher.
Also nvidia
I genuinely am having a hard time believing this because the image looks like it was generated... The kind of reality the .01% has shoved us into.
The image is ai generated, but the numbers from Nikkei aren't
It was definitely generated by AI.
There's some serious irony here. The exact type of irony that is distinct to the people forcing the corruption tool's existence.
Ugh, those hedgehog smileyfaces can fuck all the way off
140 + 100 + 180 + 100 + 30 does not equal 1350. Not even close. Impossible to put any kind of trust in AI slop
A Nikkei analysis of financial footnotes at Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Oracle found $1.65 trillion in off-balance-sheet obligations tied to AI infrastructure — binding, must-pay commitments parked in the fine print.
...a company creates or partners with a separate legal entity — a special-purpose vehicle (SPV) — that borrows the money and owns the assets. The tech company signs long-term leases or capacity contracts but doesn't record the SPV's debt on its own books.
I'm not a finance wiz but would that mean these 5 companies are carrying around 3 trillion total debt? My bank won't even let me owe them 20 bucks without penalties.
If you owe the bank $100, that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem.
I mean, that quote maybe needs to be updated for inflation, but you get the idea.
I am not sure how much to trust this article but what they have been doing is not concealed at all.
They are literally passing the money in a big circle so it looks like actual revenue.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills that the established marketplace hasn't already torpedo'd the fuck out of it.
They have been spending money like water to try and build data centers but doing such a terrible fucking job of it that they have just managed to piss off every landowner in America because their way of doing business is, "Trust me, bro", then shitting all over the towns they build in, because they think somehow the towns should be grateful that XYZ has a data center there that doesn't absolute fuck all for the actual community.
The demand is so high that tech bros are coming out of the woodwork, just like the dotcom era, trying to get a piece of this pie, but then these tech bros are the reason these large companies are shitty at their job. They don't understand that rural America isn't smoking the jerk off crack that they use to convince middle management to slave for them.
They look at "stakeholder engagement" as some sort of bankrupt woke ideology, then wonder why cities, counties, and states are legislating moratoriums on data centers.
They see the money these idiots are throwing at the problem and just want a piece of the pie. They don't think, "Ooh, I can do that better, faster, stronger..." They think that the want a piece of that revenue. They think they can put together some data center EPC, maybe even with an electric generating component, then turn around and sell the EPC company.
It is snake oil salesmanship from top to bottom.
Every single motherfucker actively trading on these guys are part of the problem.
AI is not the problem, it is the tech bros selling it.
They should all be buried alive in concrete. They are so delusional they don't even think they are doing anything wrong.
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