Better Offline

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Monologue: Concentration Risk

04 sep 2026 | 00:10:26

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how 80% of Anthropic and OpenAI’s enterprise revenues come from the top 1% of its customers, and how the entire AI bubble is a series of different concentration risks supported by venture capital and debt.

Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/hyperscale-normalization/
Ramp Data: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/comments/1w5i9t4/ramp_80_of_openai_and_anthropics_enterprise/
Terrible Groundbreaker piece: https://www.groundbrkr.com/p/the-teaser-period-why-the-ai-boom - please note that many of the numbers in this piece are wrong and it’s written by Claude, but the overall thesis is useful.

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LLMs Will Never Make Art With Caleb Wilson and Arif Hasan

02 sep 2026 | 00:42:55

In this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron is joined by Arif Hasan of Wide Left and Caleb Wilson of Kill The Computer to talk about an academic paper on AI slop, and the many reasons why LLMS can never truly make art.

Why Slop Matters: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.06060

Arif Hasan
wideleft.football
x.com/ArifHasanNFL
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Caleb Wilson
https://bsky.app/profile/birdrespecter.bsky.social
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Monologue: Into The Jensenverse

28 aug 2026 | 00:08:57

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how the AI bubble has increasingly become Jensen Huang and NVIDIA feeding different companies money, and how NVIDIA’s revenue is mostly dependent on a small handful of customers being able to raise more and more debt every year.

EDITOR’s NOTE: I incorrectly say at the beginning of this that NVIDIA’s earnings were this week. They’re next week. Sorry!

Newsletter: The AI Hater’s Manifesto: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-ai-haters-manifesto/
Bloomberg Article: https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/nvidia-500-billion-plan-envelops-164209178.html

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No, AI Is Not "Autonomously Hacking" with Cal Newport

26 aug 2026 | 01:05:27

In this week’s Better Offline, Ed talks with computer science professor and writer Cal Newport about what the recent AI hacking incidents actually mean, why we should stop referring to LLMs as AI, and what the post-bubble world looks like for LLMs.

Podcast & Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@CalNewportMedia/
Newsletter: https://calnewport.com
New Yorker archive: https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/cal-newport

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Monologue: AI Hits A Wall

21 aug 2026 | 00:09:58

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how Anthropic and OpenAI’s revenue growth is decelerating, and how OpenAI’s pause on model development and collapsing economics create the very real possibility it could collapse.

EDITOR’s NOTE: I incorrectly say at the beginning of this that NVIDIA’s earnings were this week. They’re next week. Sorry!

Newsletter: What If OpenAI Dies? https://www.wheresyoured.at/what-happens-if-openai-dies/

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The AI Clown Car W/ Gamersnexus

19 aug 2026 | 00:44:51

In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by Steve Burke of GamersNexus to talk about the increasingly-delusional promises of the AI semiconductors industry, the rotten economics of LLMs, and how everything is becoming more frantic and desperate as we reach the end.

GamersNexus - There Are No Non-Clowns In The Clown Car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F33Ohjufi9k
Support GamersNexus’ AI Surveillance Dystopia Series: https://store.gamersnexus.net/ai-dystopia
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AI Creativity Doesn't Exist With Chloe Radcliffe and Ed Ongweso Jr.

14 aug 2026 | 00:45:15

In this week's Better Offline, Ed is joined by comedian Chloe Radcliffe and critic Ed Ongweso Jr. to talk about AI’s attempts to interfere with the creative arts, horrible little robots, Mark Zuckerberg’s terrible AI essay, and why we can’t respect people writing using AI.

Chloe’s Show Cheat - https://publictheater.org/performances-jp/2026/c/chloe-radcliffe-cheat/ - August 19th and 20th in NYC!
Chloe Radcliffe: https://www.instagram.com/chloebadcliffe/?hl=en
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Ed Ongweso’s newsletter https://www.thetechbubble.info/

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Monologue: NVIDIA's No IT Loads Refused Cash Dump

12 aug 2026 | 00:11:17

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through NVIDIA’s entirely-theoretical $500 billion AI infrastructure partnership with various asset managers, all to keep up with analyst expectations that it will make more than $1.6 trillion in the next three years.

Chloe’s Show Cheat - https://publictheater.org/performances-jp/2026/c/chloe-radcliffe-cheat/ - August 19th and 20th
News Story: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/10/nvidia-wall-street-asset-managers-500-billion-ai-push.html
Jensen Huang Tweet: https://x.com/JensenHuang/status/2086934705207959965?s=20
WSJ story on Anthropic IPO: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anthropic-tries-to-shore-up-investor-confidence-ahead-of-blockbuster-ipo-0ff736ad

Numbers: Consensus analyst estimates for revenue for the next three years are utterly fucking insane. NVIDIA made about $216 billion dollars in fiscal year 2026 - which ended on January 25th 2026, frustratingly - and analyst expectations have it at $393.7 billion dollars in Fiscal Year 2027, or a little under doubling its revenue year-over-year. In Fiscal Year 2028, expectations are at $565.7 billion dollars, and in Fiscal Year 2029, NVIDIA is expected to make $694 billion dollars. Over 90% of its revenues come from selling GPUs and other data center hardware.

I realize that’s a lot of numbers, so I’ll put it simply: NVIDIA is expected to sell over $1.6 trillion dollars’ worth of GPUs by January 2029, and the vast majority of its customers - including hyperscalers - are having to take out hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of debt to pay for it.

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Monologue: The Pale Horsemen Arrive

07 aug 2026 | 00:16:36

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how 70% of Microsoft, Google and Amazon’s AI revenues are from Anthropic and OpenAI, with 7% of Microsoft’s FY26 revenue coming from OpenAI alone, and how this is cast-iron proof that demand for AI doesn’t exist at a scale that warrants any of the trillion dollars in capex they’ve spent.

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The AI Demand Bubble with Ed Elson

05 aug 2026 | 00:54:07

In this week's Better Offline, Ed is joined by Prof G Markets’ Ed Elson to talk about the recent slew of tech earnings, how analyst estimates show that 70% of Microsoft, Google and Amazon’s AI revenues come from OpenAI and Anthropic, and the logical endpoint of his AI bubble thesis.

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Monologue: We Live Inside A Dream, But Who Is The Dreamer?

31 jul 2026 | 00:13:12

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how the media deliberately ignores reality to hide how Microsoft, Google and Amazon’s cloud growth is near-entirely driven by Anthropic and OpenAI, and how doing so threatens the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people.

To celebrate the one year anniversary of the premium newsletter, I’m offering a sale on one-year subscriptions. Between now and midnight July 26, you can get a permanent annual rate of just $60— a $10 discount on the usual price of $70 - for life - https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/N9bqSLKBoS?ref=wheresyoured.at

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AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making w/ Nik Suresh

29 jul 2026 | 00:58:42

In this week’s Better Offline, Ed is joined by writer and software engineer Nik Suresh to talk about how AI mania is eviscerating global decision-making, weakening businesses and creating a culture of fear that demands workers lie about the benefits of AI to kiss up to Business Idiots.

Nik’s blog: https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/ai-mania-is-eviscerating-global-decision-making/
https://hermit-tech.com/
Brainwash An Executive Today! https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/brainwash-an-executive-today/

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Monologue: What The Hell Are The Hyperscalers Doing?

24 jul 2026 | 00:10:16

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how hyperscalers have wasted $1.1 trillion in capex on AI in a desperate attempt to sustain hypergrowth, and report on how without OpenAI’s claud spend, Microsoft Azure would’ve only grown 8% year-over-year in 2025.

The Subprime Data Center Crisis: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-subprime-data-center-crisis/
Nik Suresh: AI Is Eviscerating Global Decisionmaking https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/ai-mania-is-eviscerating-global-decision-making/

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The Cult of the Ultra-Wealthy with Ed Elson

22 jul 2026 | 00:58:47

In this week's Better Offline, Ed is joined by Prof G Markets’ Ed Elson to talk about the broken state of the stock market, the collapse of financial regulation, SpaceX’s post-IPO horror show, and how our culture conflates wealth with intelligence.

To celebrate the one year anniversary of the premium newsletter, I’m offering a sale on one-year subscriptions. Between now and midnight July 26, you can get a permanent annual rate of just $60— a $10 discount on the usual price of $70 - for life - https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/N9bqSLKBoS?ref=wheresyoured.at

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Ed Elson’s Twitter: x.com/edels0n
Ed Elson’s Show: youtube.com/@ProfGMarkets

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Monologue: OpenAI Could Kill SoftBank and Oracle

17 jul 2026 | 00:15:16

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through how OpenAI’s collapse could mortally wound SoftBank, throw the Paramount/Warner Brothers deal into chaos, kill Oracle, and destroy Larry Ellison’s empire.

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AI Made Everything Expensive (ft. GamersNexus)

15 jul 2026 | 01:03:46

In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by Steve Burke of GamersNexus to talk about how demand for AI GPUs helped the RAM cartel make every single consumer electronic more expensive, and how bad it’ll be when things unwind.

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GamersNexus on the RAM cartel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVzeHTlWIDY

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Monologue: Blame AI For Making Everything More Expensive

10 jul 2026 | 00:08:12

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through how AI is inflating the price of memory across the board by diverting fab capacity to building high bandwidth memory for GPUs, and how this situation may end in disaster for everyone involved.

GamersNexus: The DRAM Cartel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVzeHTlWIDY

HBM to increase 90% Year over Year - https://x.com/pequityresearch/status/2075035164833382909?s=46

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Trashfuture x Better Offline: Goosed In The Shell

08 jul 2026 | 00:59:29

This week’s Better Offline is the first joint episode with Riley, November, Hussein from TrashFuture, covering SoftBank’s crazy annual shareholder meeting and the general collapse of the AI bubble.

Ed Zitron and the TF Crew are on both your feeds this week to discuss the Softbank slide deck breakdown you’ve all been waiting for. It’s nothing other than the goose, and whether or not the goose was valued, and what kind of factory does a goose use to make golden eggs.

Shareholder deck for following along:
https://group.softbank/media/Project/sbg/sbg/pdf/ir/investors/shareholders/2026/shareholders-meeting_46_05_en.pdf

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Monologue: Meta Admits It Bought Too Many GPUs

03 jul 2026 | 00:06:13

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through Meta’s plans to sell its AI compute, and how this is an admission to the grim fact that there isn’t really a reason for anyone to be building all these AI data centers.

Ed Zitron on CNBC: Generative AI's Business Model Does Not Work, And Tech Is Out Of Hypergrowth Ideas
https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/comments/1ulm3a6/ed_zitron_on_cnbc_generative_ais_business_model/

Bloomberg - Meta Is Planning a Cloud Business to Sell AI Computing Power
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-01/meta-is-building-a-cloud-business-to-sell-excess-ai-compute

The Information - Nvidia Says It Will Take a Cut of Some Customers’ Cloud Revenues
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/nvidia-says-will-take-cut-customers-cloud-revenues?rc=kz8jh3

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The WSJ On Polymarket's Questionable Ads

01 jul 2026 | 00:34:41

In this week’s Better Offline, Ed talks with the Wall Street Journal’s Caitlin Ostroff and Katherine Long about how Polymarket is working with influencers to show videos of fake bets cashing out - and how the prediction markets have grown into a large, barely-regulated operation.

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They Looked Like They Were Getting Rich on Polymarket—but None of It Was Real - https://www.wsj.com/business/media/polymarket-social-media-bets-prediction-market-441cdeb5?st=57dR12&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Caitlin Ostroff
https://x.com/ceostroff

https://www.wsj.com/news/author/caitlin-ostroff

Katherine Long
https://bsky.app/profile/klong.bsky.social

https://x.com/ByKLong

https://www.wsj.com/news/author/katherine-long

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Monologue: Tokenpocalypse Now

26 jun 2026 | 00:23:47

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through how organizations are freaking out after having to pay the real cost of AI tokens, and how the surge of competitive open weight models could lead to the post-bubble locally-run future of LLMs.

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Monologue: Silicon Valley is A Cargo Cult

24 jun 2026 | 00:08:54

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through how AI is the pinnacle of Silicon Valley monoculture, and a monument to the cargo cult desperation of a tech industry that celebrates mediocrity and has run out of ideas.

Newsletter: Cargo Culture: https://www.wheresyoured.at/cargo-culture/

OpenAI Exclusive: https://www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-openai-financials/

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The AI Industry Must Stop Doom Trolling w/ Cal Newport

19 jun 2026 | 01:02:25

In this week’s Better Offline, Ed talks with computer science professor and writer Cal Newport about AI companies “doom trolling” consumers using scary stories about conscious computers, and how we need to make fun of the scare-mongering and ridicule the executives peddling in it.

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Cal Newport’s “Dear A.I. Companies: The Doom Trolling Needs To Stop https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/17/opinion/ai-dangerous-openai-anthropic.html

Podcast & Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@CalNewportMedia/

Newsletter: https://calnewport.com

New Yorker archive: https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/cal-newport

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Exclusive: OpenAI Spent $34 Billion In 2025, With Losses Up 8X

16 jun 2026 | 00:04:02

In a special exclusive episode of Better Offline, Ed Zitron digs into the audited financials of OpenAI from 2024 and 2025.

Companion newsletter: www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-openai-financials/

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CZM Rewind: The Rot-Com Bubble

10 jun 2026 | 00:30:52

Tech's hyper-growth era is ending, with online 100 million new people getting online between 2022 and 2023, and almost every major web platform seeing a decline in growth since 2021. In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through how tech's decline is driving the tech industry to try and sell you useless products like the metaverse, cryptocurrency and generative AI.

Original Air Date: 6.5.24

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Monologue: AI Can't Afford To Slow Down

05 jun 2026 | 00:06:22

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through how the “does AI have ROI?” debate is coming at the worst possible time for two companies that can’t afford to slow down thanks to their $1.1 trillion in compute commitments.

Newsletter: AI Doesn’t Have ROI https://www.wheresyoured.at/ai-doesnt-have-roi/
Ed on Bloomberg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbKDmkJPVvI
The AI industry's profit problem is getting bigger, says Goldman Sachs' equity research chief
https://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-ai-boom-profit-problem-semiconductor-chip-companies-investment-2026-6
Bloomberg: AI’s Bills Are Bigger Than Ever, And Coming Due https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-06-04/the-ai-boom-s-next-test-is-the-roi-worth-the-cost
Axios: AI sticker shock hits corporate America https://www.axios.com/2026/05/28/ai-spending-roi-enterprise-costs
Uber COO story: https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-coo-andrew-macdonald-ai-token-spending-harder-justify-2026-5

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Why AI Has No ROI with Paul Kedrosky

03 jun 2026 | 00:47:09

In this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron is joined by economist Paul Kedrosky to talk about why nobody can find the ROI of AI, why there won’t be a Dot Com Bubble-style recovery for AI data centers, and how Google’s $80bn equity sale shows we’re at the top.

https://paulkedrosky.com/

The Nick, Dick and Paul Show: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFbDiETo29GTIjg6Lk4imig

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Monologue: Everyone Suddenly Cares About AI ROI

29 mei 2026 | 00:11:50

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through how AI’s move to token-based billing has revealed that absolutely nobody has a way of measuring AI’s ROI - and how these massive costs might finally burst the bubble.

Companion newsletter:
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-revenge-of-the-business-idiot/

Axios: AI sticker shock hits corporate America https://www.axios.com/2026/05/28/ai-spending-roi-enterprise-costs

Uber COO story: https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-coo-andrew-macdonald-ai-token-spending-harder-justify-2026-5

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The AI Industry Is Losing

27 mei 2026 | 00:19:28

In this week's Better Offline, Ed Zitron runs you through how Uber’s COO said the quiet part out loud - that AI’s outputs and efficacy do not match up with its ruinous costs - and how despite its bluster, the AI industry’s grift is failing.

Free newsletter tie-in: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-revenge-of-the-business-idiot/

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