You might have an investment management firm that has a "tech" portfolio and a separate "clothing" portfolio. By framing themselves as a tech company they'll be put into investors' "tech" portfolio. Clients will say "I think technology is the future; invest in tech companies for me" and the money manager will buy a bunch of shares from the tech portfolio. See how it works?
replyAllbirds sold their shoe business and is basically a SPAC that spun up an AI company under the existing publicly traded company. For all intents and purposes it’s just a new AI company.
replyYou think an investor gives a shit past "if they say this, the numbers will go up"? And the numbers mostly go up because everyone has the same mentality.
replyNo one cares about the product any more. And that will be the end of all of this.
You have to realize rich people can be stupid too.
replyOr just investment quotas requiring AI in the portfolio. I suspect it's mostly this. Or getting included in more indices etc.
replyThe more trendy boxes you tick, the broader the universe of people whose box you tick and who can thus invest.
Investors by nature lap up hype, and it seems to work for them
replyAI graphics division: Putting in 100s of engineering hours to build and internal AI tool to produce AI-slopified marketing in order to save ~2h a month of human work.
replyThe truth is that if you get in early enough on a hype train and cash out in time, you will make money. That's enough of a rational basis to participate. The ostensible purpose of it all is basically irrelevant, except as a signal to participate.
replyThey're almost certainly hoping for a Greater Fool.
replyA lot of it is prisoner's dilemma and its variants. As an investor, even if you think a particular AI shift is bullshit, you have to take into account the possibility that other investors won't - and at that point you might miss out on the gains.
replyThis is one of the reasons stock market is so disconnected from reality.
its greater fool theory https://moneyterms.co.uk/greater-fool/
replyBut wouldn’t it be a failure if it’s bullshit and therefore no gains?
replyNot if you sell before the other fools.
replyA16Z's post on the Slack IPO (https://a16z.com/announcement/slack/) is a good pointer to the kind of thinking here. A pivot from an unprofitable game to laying off 80% of the company to a weird communication app could be fairly described as "bullshit", but when your business model is finding the rare exceptions where the stars align and a company ends up being worth billions, it's not a kind of bullshit you can afford to be entirely unreceptive to.
replyIt’s the latest version of the meme stock craze. Nobody bought Gamespot stock because they thought it was a good long term investment. They bought it because they thought they could quickly double or triple their money and leave someone holding the bag
replyThe same investor who will buy SpaceX at 250 PE. They are all over the place, hence all the AI washing.
reply> Who actually thinks that Allbirds will see much higher returns because they "have an AI graphics division?"
replyPerhaps the investment is more on the “greater fool” theory. “I think this is complete nonsense, but there’s probably someone not as savvy who will buy into this garbage idea upon which I can profit.”
>I like AI, but seriously, who actually invests on this basis? Where is the critical thinking? I don't feel sympathy for any investor that gets rug pulled on this stuff.
replyThey don't and the people who are falling for this rhetoric are naive. Most investors _should_ invest more in AI companies. And most companies _should_ invest in AI. It is the rational move and it is exactly what we are seeing here. I don't know what the hysteria is about.