AI Bubble Musings (Part Two)

Since my initial [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/s/CUQLGB7WmT), I've been reading both the bull and bear cases on AI this weekend in light up Google's recent earnings report and specifically it's cloud commentary. It seems like both sides have just dug in even harder. The bears point to +$700bn in AI capex this year, shrinking free cash flow and stretched valuations while the bulls counter with Google Cloud growing 82%, exploding cloud backlogs, and demand that still exceeds supply. The debate isn't whether AI is real. It obviously is. The real question is how to evaluate whether the massive investment can generate a realistic return. Big Tech will spend $1 trillion next year building AI infrastructure. What's a realistic ROI on that investment? Even assuming a pretty reasonable 15% return on invested capital, that's over $100bn in incremental annual after-tax profits. And that's just to earn an acceptable return on the investment, which is a pretty high bar. If AI ends up living up to the hype, generating an +$100bn in annual profits is possible.