Post

My final newsletter of 2025: We're in The Enshittifinancial Crisis, the fourth stage of enshittification, where companies turn on their shareholders. Unprofitable, unsustainable AI threatens future of venture capital, private equity and the markets themselves. www.wheresyoured.at/the-enshitti...

Enshittification's first three stages - from a platform people love to a platform businesses profit off of to a platform that hurts consumers and businesses alike - are well-known. But I argue we're in a fourth stage where stocks have become enshittified too. www.wheresyoured.at/the-enshitti...

We’re bearing witness to the enshittification of the stock market, where toxic companies appreciate in value despite their toxicity, recklessness and waste, aided and abetted by analysts who not only ignore the toxicity but actively celebrate it. www.wheresyoured.at/the-enshitti...

We’ve seen deals that aren’t real - such as OpenAI's deals with AMD, Broadcom and SK Hynix - treated as gospel by credulous analysts, who fail to ask the basic question of whether said deals are even financially viable. Investors are abused by their investments. www.wheresyoured.at/the-enshitti...

The result is a breakdown of trust in the public markets and of the investors who are backing pre-IPO companies, with analysts acting as fractional marketing teams for stocks, boosting OpenAI deals for Oracle and NVIDIA that never existed, hurting investors. www.wheresyoured.at/the-enshitti...

Nowhere is this more obvious in the private markets. VCs are running out of money, and over the past few years we’ve witnessed a massive degradation in fund performance. That degradation has only worsened over the past years, and AI promises to increase the pain. www.wheresyoured.at/the-enshitti...

More than half of VC funding goes to AI companies that pay OpenAI and Anthropic, who then pay the hyperscalers, and at some point somebody is going to run out of money to pay somebody else. When that happens, the bubble bursts. www.wheresyoured.at/the-enshitti...

The reason we haven’t seen the appropriate level of fear is because, on paper, things are great. These AI companies have sky-high valuations on paper, making VCs look like geniuses...except nobody is buying AI companies. Look at Groq, or Inflection, or Windsurf. www.wheresyoured.at/the-enshitti...

Turning to the public markets, we see more evidence of enshittification. CoreWeave is utterly rotten and debt-ridden - OpenAI has negotiated *net 360 payment terms*, and NVIDIA in its earnings admitted it's had to backstop an entity that's very likely CoreWeave. www.wheresyoured.at/the-enshitti...

CoreWeave is a systemic weakness in the financial system. Across 27 tracked data center deals, I found that almost every single major bank - MUFG, SMBC, JP Morgan, Goldman, Morgan Stanley - has been wrapped up in a company that can't support its operations. www.wheresyoured.at/the-enshitti...

We’re already seeing financial institutions start to get cold feet, as they either pull back from funding deals (Blue Owl), or buy instruments - selling risk on their debts - to protect themselves against any possible failure (Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley). www.wheresyoured.at/the-enshitti...

We don’t need to wait for the markets to wise up. If one AI giant fails - OpenAI or Anthropic, to be specific - and the low demand for AI compute becomes apparent, it’ll be a signal that starts Wall Street and VC’s retreat. It's a question of what breaks first. www.wheresyoured.at/the-enshitti...

If I’m right, the AI bubble is far more vulnerable than we thought. We just need one more domino to fall. And when it does, it will be a reckoning moment for Silicon Valley. www.wheresyoured.at/the-enshitti...

Is there an opportunity to make money if the bubble burst by feeding on the carrion of these failed companies? And, hypothetically, where should one be prepared to put their money should this happen? Uh, asking for a friend.

The bubble’s popping would obviously be a vindication, it won't bring me any joy. I mourn the lost opportunities the investment represented, the waste, the layoffs from dying startups and wounded hyperscalers, and the dark winter for startup funding afterwards. www.wheresyoured.at/the-enshitti...