No one wants to say it proudly but $MSFT and $META are throwing billions of dollars at AI CAPEX with little to show for it. They turned what was originally a CAPEX light business with high software margins and lit it on fire. Copilot and even Meta AI are absolutely inferior to GPT/Claude by every conceivable metric. What are they even doing? AI is becoming a commodity now with so many good models in the market. There is no MOAT. More importantly, AI does not demonstrate ROI for most businesses and is a rather expensive technology financially and environmentally. OpenAI which is azures biggest customer is recently running at a loss LMAO and profitability is not clear 😂.
Instead of burning precious shareholder FCF, Satya should focus on optimizing his own products that made MSFT great or at the very least slow down CAPEX. Azure as an AI play will compete with Amazon, Google Cloud and even other players like Nebius for consumers. New more expensive chips will come out every year increasing costs ($MU will go up forever). Depreciation is a thing. It will be race for lower margins.
I get the fear…they are worried about missing out on a digital god and are willing to build and spend billions to have a stake. But at the moment, the progress is minimal after 4 years since the AI buildout started. Maybe it’s better for OpenAI and Anthropic to take the lead instead of burning precious capital with nothing to show for it. I am so confused with their AI strategy and Satya (and Zuckerberg) should be replaced. At the very least explain the ROI before incinerating shareholder cash. Please explain why I am wrong so I can cope.
**TLDR**: Short Mag7 and long semis. Biggest transfer of wealth in history from $MSFT shareholders to $MU and $AMD shareholders! We are currently experiencing a prisoners dilemma where no Mag7 wants to be left behind and they choose to spend on CAPEX which is hurting all of them collectively. Instead they should cooperate rationally by cutting spending collectively. Otherwise, Multiple compression is here to stay bois