[stego-tech]

This genuinely wouldn't surprise me, and I need to go back to looking at balance sheets to see if I can sus out the validity of that narrative. As AI subsidization ends prematurely and costs skyrocket, we should expect to see those costs reflected in the operation statements of major customers.

Since I had Coinbase up for review already, I decided to peek there first for any sort of correlation. In 2023, their "Technology and Development" line item shows $1.32bn going out, and by 2025 it'd ballooned to $1.67bn. This is despite headcount actually contracting by almost a thousand people between those two statements, which would normally mean a smaller technology spend since a lot of corporate software is seat-based nowadays. This suggests that yeah, actually AI spend is creating a heavier drag on the balance sheets and it's being offset with layoffs since the "job replacement" narrative is strong. That said, I'd need to check dozens' more balance sheets to draw any sort of industry-wide conclusion.

[rixed]

And to factor in other infrastructure costs that's become more expensive too, such as hosting or hardware. So unless you can isolate AI spending from others that's not going to be convincing.

[stego-tech]

...hence why I qualified the statement like I did. I'm well aware one example from one company in a budgetary line item that's inclusive of labor and licensing and hardware and purchases and AI is not going to be remotely conclusive on its face.

Yet even taking into account all of that data, a $300m jump in three years must include some significant and growing amount of AI spend; everything else would've contracted (licensing, hardware) stagnated (cloud consumption), or been a singular event (CAPEX purchases) relative to the company's health and headcount.

[rozap]

This is pretty interesting. I'd read your blog if you write a thing about it.

[tmp10423288442]

Ironically an analysis that Codex or Claude Code might be able to perform