Already have an account? log in
This article is FREE for you
Create a free account and join institutional investors, analysts and strategists from the world's largest banks
By submitting your email address you agree to receive communication by email
Is Alphabet’s 100-Year Bond The Bell At The Top?
Maybe the investment grade primary market will eventually balk at absorbing a deluge of big-tech sup
OR, subscribe now for unlimited access
By submitting your email address you agree to receive communication by email
By submitting your email address you agree to receive communication by email
How much of the projected/hoped for AI driven economic growth is from AI vs AGI?
As an equity holder, I’d like to thank the lenders to Google.
I’m pretty confident that over the next 100 years, the C-Suite will be able to use the proceeds from these debt offerings for a combination of cap ex/buybacks to keep me sleeping 8 hours/night.
There was another very distinct bell that rang just this past Sunday.
Just a few weeks ago, I was thinking about the last big tech bubble. “AI might be a bubble,” I mused,” but it’s not as bad as the 2000 blow-everything-on-Super-Bowl-ads bubble.” Remember the 2000 Super Bowl? E-Trade had an ad where a monkey danced on a bucket to “La Cucaracha” while two men who appeared to have developmental disabilities clapped along. The tag line was, “Well we just wasted $2 million. What are you doing with your money?” That sure maked me trust their dedication to fiduciary responsibility.
Then there was the monster.com ad where a series of children declared their career ambitions to the camera. My favorite was a little boy who proudly declared, “I want to claw my way up to middle management!”
Then came this Super Bowl. OpenAI reportedly spent $85 million on their promotion. Anthropic had an ad which directly targeted OpenAI (it was pretty funny). Then there was a whole slew of ads from AI startups I’ve never heard of. They raised god-knows how much money from venture capitalists and rather than blowing it on NVidia chips, blew it on an advertisement. Coinbase rounded things out with the most mystifying ad of all. It was just a Backstreet Boys song, white lyrics on a blue screen like the monitor at a karaoke bar. My wife and I were both asking, “Who the hell is this an ad for?” Then it just says “coinbase” at the end. That’s it.
We are officially in the Lighting Money On Fire With Super Bowl Ads stage of the bubble. By 2000 standards, the top should be just a month away.
Have you ever heard of a company called EDS? Neither had anyone in 2000. If the purpose of an ad is to promote your brand, then EDS ad was an epic failure. But damned if they didn’t make one of the most memorable Super Bowl ads ever. The 2026 version didn’t even rise to the “People will be talking about this twenty-six years from now” level.
https://youtu.be/m_MaJDK3VNE?si=NW9ivhVDF097pSbR
That’s a good observation. The sheer number of AI ads this year reminded me of all the crypto ads that ran during Super Bowl LVI in 2022 (which some deemed the “Crypto Bowl”). That was just about nine-months before Bitcoin bottomed around $16,000. Maybe it is something like the Sports Illustrated cover jinx.
Great clip by the way. I remember my wife and I both laughing at that commercial when it aired.