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January 29, 2026 13 mins

In part three of this week’s Dot Com Bubble series, Ed Zitron explains how the economics of the AI bubble are much, much worse than the dot com bubble, with far fewer customers, way more debt, and a stock market with an unhealthy obsession with one stock - NVIDIA.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Zone Media. Hello, and welcome back to Better Offline. I'm
your hostead z Tron and this is the third part
of our series and one way AI bubble is worse

(00:24):
than the dot com bubble, And today we're going to
focus on a question what actually burst dot com bubble.
I should also be clear there is no clear answer
to any question like this is kind of a kind
of a difficult thing to pull apart. But to start,
we're going to need a comparison, and really the InVideo
of the dot com bubble would be the companies making
and selling the fiber optic cables themselves and the associated hardware.

(00:47):
In July two thousand, Corning, which made and still makes
far more than just optical cables, became the largest supplier
of fiber optic wires and ended two thousand and seven
point one billion in revenue on an income of four
hundred and twenty two million. That's profit, baby. I know
we're not used to that because we talk about AI
all the time. By April two thousand and one, Corning

(01:07):
had revised its earnings estimates down three times, estimating revenue
for the year to be between seven point eight billion
and eight billion. Corning would eventually reveal net sales of
six point two seven billion dollars with a loss of
five point four ninety eight billion dollars for the year.
They tried to grow a little too fast. They took
out loans. They did the thing that everyone does in
this kind of era. Fiber optic cable from firm JDS Uniphase,

(01:31):
a conglomerate of different optical companies merged in nineteen ninety nine,
would go on an acquisition spread to dramatically expand its
fiber optic offerings, eventually crowning itself and this is from
their own press release, the number one supplier of fiber
ouptic components and revealing net earnings of two hundred and
eight million in January two thousand and one. In July
two thousand and one, it would announce a thirty five

(01:51):
percent decrease in sales quarter over quarter and a forty
four point eight billion dollar decrease in the value of
companies that it had acquired, on top of a net
loss of four hundred and seventy seven million dollars in
the quarter. The stock would lose ninety nine percent of
its value before an eventual rebrand and collapse Okay, so
now you know all that crab. Let's get more specific.
Nvidia currently represents seven percent of the S and P

(02:14):
five hundred, with a market capitalization of somewhere in the
region of four trillion dollars. In September two thousand, je
Uniphase made up point seven percent and Colling zero point
six nine two percent of the S and P five
hundred when it totaled, and it is surprisingly difficult to
find the exact number, around eleven point seven trillion dollars
in total, with the highest weighted tech stocks being Cisco

(02:36):
at three point one percent, Microsoft are two point five percent,
Intel at two point two percent, Oracle at one point
seventy five percent, and EMC at one point seven percent.
Now I've had some bright sparks when I've made this
point online, say ed ed, what about no hotel? Nortel
was at one point four percent, Loocent was at point
eight eight percent. Wasn't the same thing? In simpler terms,

(02:56):
the dot com bubble didn't burst because of the market
subsession with one company, but evenly distributed in an incredibly
vague sense that the future was going to be online
and we all need to be involved. The world didn't
wait with baited breath for every single earnings announcement from
Corning or Jduniphase, nor did the health of the market
depend on the continued ability to bet and raise revenues
that Echelon's higher than any other company in the market. Now,

(03:18):
the problem with trying to find an exact comparison is
that fiber optic cabling and GPUs are fundamentally different things, requiring,
amongst other things, massive optical network terminals to actually turn
big looms of cable into actual Internet connections. And well,
I guess that you could compare that to a data center.
But all of that stuff, as big as it sounds, eh,
nowhere near as big as a n AI data center,

(03:40):
Nor was it as power intensive, nor did they require
to build an entire fucking gas power station in the
middle of Texas for it. The massive costs associate with
the fiber buildout could make Nortel or loosen to each
boasted record revenues in two thousand and then got the
shit kicked out of them in two thousand and one.
The invidios of the dot com bubble, if you're really
one though, way, I must insist that they think that

(04:02):
we're we're going through our own thing. We're at the
beginning of history, not the end of it. In any case,
they're the only real revenue comparison. In Vidia's last quarterly
revenue was fifty seven billion dollars, with around eighty eight
percent of that coming from its state at center Vertigo,
where it sells GPUs and the associated networking gear. In
Loosen's case, the Service Provider Network segment, where it bundled

(04:24):
all its telecoms infrastructure like optical networking and switching phere.
It's two thousand nine yearal rapport accounted for seventy eight
percent of its thirty three point eight billion dollars in revenue,
a slight improvement from ninety ninety nine when it was
eighty one percent and ninety ninety eight when it was
eighty three percent. For Nortel, the comp was its Service
Provider and Carrier segment, which made eighty two percent of
its thirty billion dollars in revenue in two thousand. It

(04:46):
gets a little confusing at this point when you try
and work out whether they're either of their net incomers.
Loosen had to restate revenues in two thousand and Nortel
had to do so for two thousand and one, two
thousand and two, and two thousand and three, thanks to
creative accounting principles that, in Nortel's case, overstate revenue by
nearly two billion dollars. Pobody's nerveffect I guess nevertheless, for
two thousand loose and booked one point twenty one to

(05:07):
nine billion dollars in net income, and Nortel well, okay,
whoopsee doodle, they lost two billion dollars. Yes, things are
materially different in the AI bubble. In Vidia posted thirty
one point one to nine billion dollars in net income
it's last quarter, and if we are to believe, take
in Baron's marketing arm for Nvidia, who acts like a
fucking cheerleader its largest customers of printing money to the

(05:29):
point that there's simply no reason to worry. And in
some ways they're right. In Vidia prints money, It's incredibly profitable,
has a virtual monopoly over the GPUs behind the AI bubble,
and it can effectively set prices at whatever it wants to. Similarly,
the companies that are buying the most GPUs, Microsoft, Meta,
Google and Amazon are all incredibly profitable themselves, which is

(05:49):
really easy if you don't think about it for more
than a minute to take to mean that in video
won't end up like loosent, Nortel, or any other dot
com casualty. Now, I need to be very clear about something.
Just because Nvidia isn't like Nortel or loosened doesn't mean
that things aren't bad. And just because some of the
companies that buying these GPUs are profitable doesn't mean that
all of them are or won't die on their asses

(06:12):
the moment the debt train stopped showing up. Okay, So
to really simplify the comparison here, the debt part of
the dot com bubble was about customers of telecommunications companies
taking on debt and the telecommunications companies themselves taking on
debt to service these contracts. These companies also did a
number of aggressive acquisitions, many of which had to be

(06:32):
marked down. As I've mentioned, Loosened, Nortel and many of
the other tailcom's companies building out Internet infrastructure would also
loan money to their customers in a thing called vendor financing,
leading them to have to write off hundreds of millions
of dollars of debts. When these customers collapsed, and in
fact Windstar, a company that did a massive deal with
how you may remembered this with the Enron series, they

(06:53):
ended up their bankruptcy. People ended up suing Loosen and
getting hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, that's a
great place the start to make the comparison. Nortel's largest
deals included a multi billion dollar contract to sell stuff
to now world famous fraudster's world Com, a bizarre three
billion dollar managed services deal with global IT firm computer
scientists that involved two thousand Nortel employees moving into the company,

(07:16):
and a one point four billion dollar, ten year long
deal with England's Cable and Wireless Group to build and
operate the cable and wireless internet backbone throughout Europe and
North America that was quickly underwater. Loosen steals included a
five billion dollar deal with Verizon and a one point
four billion dollar deal with other carriers to supply tech
to Chinese Unicorn. Money was flowing, but it was all

(07:36):
in these weird directions with people that couldn't necessarily afford
it or that would lose. Everybody involve money. The comparison
starts to drift when you talk about revenue centralization. Loosened,

(08:00):
Nortel and other dot com bubble telecoms companies had a
variety of deals in the one hundred million dollars to
three hundred million dollar range and many more that were
in the twenty million dollars to fifty million dollar range.
In two thousand eight, and t account for ten percent
of Loosen's revenue and Verizon thirteen percent. Nortel sadly didn't
disclose its revenue breakdown by customer. Nortel was, however, Calling's

(08:21):
largest customer for optical cable and fun fact, Loosen also
made optical cable and was the second largest provider in
the business. Despite what JDA Uniphase said, JDA uniforse, you
fucking lied to me that one's just for Phil. Phil
brought on. You're listening to this, you're going to hear
that you can go. I fucking hated jediuniphase or JDS uniphase.
I learned about this company a month ago. I hate them,

(08:44):
but that revenue centralization is very important. In Video's revenue
is extremely centralized. In its last earnings, in Video noted
that sixty one percent of its revenue came from four
unnamed companies, and for years somewhere between eighteen percent and
forty percent of its revenue has come from anywhere from
doing two and four companies, none of which it names.

(09:04):
This is critically important because in video represents, as I said,
seven percent of the value of the S and B
five hundred and the markets have an unhealthy relationship with
its stock freaking out in August twenty twenty five, when
year of a year growth was only I am not
fucking with you, expected to be around fifty percent year
every year, people were freaking out. They dumped the stock

(09:24):
for over a month. It was crazy. As a result,
any stock panic caused by Nvidia will naturally drag down
the entire market with him. The dot com bubble was,
as I've discussed two things, the bullshit dot com bubble
from websites and the telecommunications bubble caused by massive overbuilds
of fiber optic and internet services. When the bubble burst,
it was caused by rising interest rates increasing the cost

(09:46):
of borrowing, and the markets realizing that these unprofitable companies
wouldn't survive long term, and then venture capital being depleted
and I realized it's tempting to claim we're in the
same situation, but I must I must insist it's really
quite different. At the time, venture capital was much much smaller.
For the following numbers, I'm going to give you the
numbers sug justed for inflation, otherwise I'm going to be
here all fucking day. US venture capital invested twenty three

(10:10):
billion dollars in ninety ninety seven, twenty eight point twenty
one billion dollars in ninety ninety eight, ninety five point
five billion dollars in ninety ninety nine, and one hundred
and ninety seven point seven one billion dollars in two thousand,
for a grand total of three hundred and forty four
point five billion dollars, a mere six point two billion
dollars more than the three hundred and thirty eight point
three billion dollars raised in twenty twenty five alone in

(10:30):
venture capital was somewhere between forty and fifty percent of
that around one hundred and sixty eight billion dollars going
into AI investments, and in twenty twenty four, North American
AI startups only raised around one hundred and six billion dollars.
HiT's growing HiT's happening more the dot com bubble burst
when the bullshit dot com stocks died on their ass
and the world realized that the magic of the Internet

(10:50):
was not a panacea that would fix every business model,
and there was no magic moment where a company like
webvan or pets dot Com would turn into this magical
profitable beast from a horribly unprofitable business. Similarly, companies like
Loosent Technology stop being rewarded for doing dodgy circuit that
deals with companies like Windstar, leading to the collapse of
the telecommunications bubble that led to millions of miles of

(11:11):
dark fiber being sold dirt cheap in two thousand and two.
The oversupply of dark fiber was eventually seen as a positive,
leading to an eventual surge and demand as billions of
people came online toward the end of the two thousands. Now,
I know what you're thinking, Ed. Isn't this exactly what's
happening here in the AI bubble? Isn't this the same thing.
We've got overvalued stars, We've got multiple unprofitable, unsustainable AI

(11:34):
companies promising to IPO, We've got overvalued tech stocks, and
we've got one of the largest infrastructure buildouts of all time.
Tech companies are trading at ridiculous multiples of their earnings
per share, but the multiples aren't as high. That's good, right, No,
it isn't.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
It isn't.

Speaker 1 (11:49):
AI boosters and well wishers are obsessed with making this
comparison because saying things worked out after the dot com
bubble allows them to rationalize doing stupid, destructive, and shitty things.
Even if this was just like the dot com bubble,
things would be absolutely fucking catastrophic. The NASDAG drops seventy
eight percent from its peak in March two thousand, this

(12:10):
time due to the incredible ignorance of both the private
and public powerbrocus of the tech industry. I expect consequences
that will range from horrifying to calamitus, depending almost entirely
on how long the bubble takes to burst and how
willing the SEC is the greenlight and IPO of Open
AI or anthropic. I'm very worried, and tomorrow I'm going

(12:30):
to finish up this series with a somewhat dark note.
Then we need to stop pretending that this will be
a smooth landing or that anything will be left in
its wake worth keeping.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and
composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matasowski. You
can check out more of his music and audio projects
at Mattasowski dot com m attoso wa Ski dot com.
You can email me at easy at Better offline dot
com or visit Better Offline dot com to find more
podcast links and of course, my newsletter. I also really

(13:10):
recommend you go to chat dot where's youreaed dot at
to visit the discord, and go to our slash Better
Offline to check out our reddit. Thank you so much
for listening. Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio
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Speaker 1 (13:28):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Host

Ed Zitron

Ed Zitron

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