HAPPY #420
ROLL ROLL ROLL a joint twist it at the end
Light it up take a Puff
Pass it to your Friend
Happy #420
ESSAYS Ricardo @Ric_RTP https://x.com/Ric_RTP
AI is the first technology in history where more customers makes you POORER.
Every tech company in history got cheaper as it scaled.
More users meant lower costs per user. That’s the entire model.
That’s why Microsoft prints money. That’s why Google prints money. That’s why Meta prints money.
Software has near-zero marginal cost. Build it once. Sell it a billion times. The 100 millionth user costs basically nothing to serve.
This is the single most important rule in tech economics.
But AI completely broke it.
Every single query costs real compute. Every interaction burns real electricity. Every response depreciates real hardware.
There is no “build once, sell forever.” There is only “burn money every time someone asks a question.”
And the numbers prove it:
OpenAI hit $20 billion in annualized revenue. Losses? $14 billion.
For every dollar they earn, they spend $1.69 delivering it. Their losses TRIPLED as their revenue grew.
Not because they’re bad at business, but simply because the model itself is broken.
Anthropic crossed $30 billion in annualized revenue. Still burning billions. Still not profitable. Still raising tens of billions just to keep the lights on.
xAI is burning $1 billion every single month.
Perplexity spent 164% of its revenue on compute costs from AWS, They literally spent more on running the AI than they made from selling it.
This is not how technology is supposed to work.
Google once estimated that adding AI to every search query would require 500,000 A100 servers. The cost of answering a single AI query is 10x MORE than a traditional search result.
Traditional software: Serving 1 million users costs roughly the same as serving 100,000. The marginal cost is basically zero.
AI: Serving 1 million users can cost 10 times what 100,000 costs. Every new user is a new expense. Every new query is a new dollar burned.
This is reverse economics. The more successful you become, the faster you die.
And nobody in the industry wants to talk about it because the entire narrative depends on you believing AI companies work like software companies.
But they don’t. They NEVER will.
Software scales to infinity. AI scales to bankruptcy.
HSBC ran the numbers on OpenAI specifically.
Their conclusion:
Even after every funding round, every investment, every deal, OpenAI still faces a $207 BILLION shortfall to reach profitability.
The industry response has been to raise prices.
ChatGPT went from free to $20 to $200 for the Pro plan. And it’s still not enough because the cost of running these models grows FASTER than any price increase consumers will accept.
Meanwhile 966 AI startups died in 2024. A 25.6% jump from the year before.
AI startups burn cash twice as fast as non-AI tech companies. And the ones building on TOP of OpenAI and Anthropic are in even worse shape.
Every wrapper app. Every “AI-powered” SaaS tool. Every startup whose entire product is someone else’s model with a different skin on it.
They’re all margin-negative. Every single one.
And these are the companies about to IPO.
SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cerebras. $240 billion in combined raises planned for 2026.
They’re asking you to invest in an industry where the fundamental unit economics don’t work. Where the MORE customers you get, the MORE money you lose. Where no company has figured out how to make the math positive.
The dot-com bubble had the same pitch: “Revenue is growing. Profitability comes later.”
For most of them, later never came.
The question isn’t whether AI will change the world. It will.
The question is whether it can do it without going broke first.
And right now, every single number literally says no.
How can they become profitable?
44% of Gen Z employees are secretly destroying their company’s AI systems from the inside.
They’re literally poisoning the data, faking the results, and making AI look like it doesn’t work.
This new survey of 2,400 workers by Writer and Workplace Intelligence is genuinely unbelievable…
29% of ALL employees admit to actively sabotaging their company’s AI strategy.
Among Gen Z workers? 44%.
Nearly HALF.
What they’re doing:
– Feeding proprietary company data into public AI tools on purpose
– Tampering with performance reviews to make AI look like it’s underperforming
– Deliberately generating garbage output so leadership thinks the technology is broken
– Refusing training
– Refusing to log in
– Some are even manipulating analytics dashboards to HIDE any productivity gains AI actually delivers
They have a name for it too: FOBO. Fear Of Becoming Obsolete.
And it honestly makes complete sense when you look at what their CEOs are telling them.
Palantir’s CEO stood on a stage at Davos in January and said “AI will destroy humanities jobs.” Direct quote. Then added “You’re effed.”
Anthropic’s CEO said AI could eliminate HALF of all entry-level white-collar jobs.
Microsoft’s AI chief said ALL white-collar work could be automated within 18 months.
These aren’t random Twitter predictions. These are the CEOs of the companies BUILDING the AI.
Telling the workforce directly that they’re about to be replaced.
Then those same companies turn around and say “please adopt this tool that’s going to take your job.”
And they’re genuinely confused when employees fight back.
The data gets even worse though:
60% of executives say they’re considering FIRING employees who refuse to adopt AI. 77% say they’ll block promotions for anyone who resists.
Accenture is literally monitoring weekly AI login data to decide who gets promoted.
Meanwhile the job market for the people being told to “adapt or die” looks like this:
– Entry-level software postings dropped from 43% to 28% since 2023
– 43% of US graduates aged 22 to 27 are underemployed
– 60% of entry-level jobs now require 3+ years of experience
– 80,000 tech workers have been laid off in 2026 alone
AI was the LEADING cause of job cuts in March 2026 for the first time in recorded history.
So the math is simple:
CEOs are telling workers AI will replace them. Then demanding they use it. Then threatening to fire them if they don’t. All while the job market outside is collapsing.
And they wonder why 44% of Gen Z is burning it from the inside.
But here’s the part that surprised me the most:
75% of the executives in the same survey admitted their company’s AI strategy is “more for show than a meaningful guide to outcomes.”
3 out of 4 companies don’t even HAVE a real AI strategy.
They’re forcing adoption of tools they don’t understand. For strategies they haven’t built. While threatening the livelihoods of people who see through the entire charade.
54% of executives also said AI is “tearing their company apart.”
Well… no shit.
This is the first organized sabotage campaign against a technology in modern corporate history.
The last time workers systematically destroyed the machines threatening their jobs was the Luddite movement in 1811. Factory workers smashing textile looms across England.
History books treated them like idiots.
Turns out they were 200 years early.
The only difference is that today’s sabotage is invisible.
Corrupted data, faked metrics, and an entire generation quietly making sure the robots don’t work.
And the craziest part is that the executives threatening to fire them are the same ones who can’t tell the AI is being sabotaged.
Because they don’t understand the technology either.
Trump is about to lock 157 million Americans out of their own bank accounts.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed an executive order forcing every US bank to collect proof of citizenship is “in process.”
And he just doubled down: “If Treasury and the banking regulators say it’s their job, it’s their job.”
This sounds irrelevant but here’s what this really means:
Per the Congressional Research Service, only 48% of Americans hold a US passport.
That leaves over 170 million Americans without one.
REAL IDs don’t count. Driver’s licenses don’t count. Social Security cards don’t count.
Per Wall Street Journal reporting, banks will need a passport or birth certificate.
The Brennan Center found 21.3 million voting-age US citizens don’t have documents proving their citizenship easily available.
These are Americans who are about to lose access to their own bank accounts.
And here’s the thing:
The order applies to new AND existing customers. Banks could be forced to close accounts of people who can’t produce documents.
Your 78-year-old grandmother born at home in 1948. Your naturalized dad who lost his papers 30 years ago. Your cousin mid-passport renewal.
The official story is that this stops illegal immigrants from accessing banking.
But the actual reality:
Illegal immigrants can’t open US bank accounts anyway. Know Your Customer rules already require SSNs or ITINs. The existing system ALREADY blocks what this order claims to block.
So who does this actually target?
The half of Americans without a passport. Rural Americans. Elderly Americans born before centralized record-keeping. Black Americans in Southern states where birth records were historically unreliable. Low-income Americans who can’t afford $225 for an expedited passport.
The American Action Forum, a center-right think tank, estimates this adds 33 to 73 million paperwork hours and $2.6 to $5.6 billion in compliance costs.
Guess who pays those costs?
You do. Through fees. Through closed accounts. Through denied loans.
Bessent’s defense quote: “I have a place in the UK, they want to know who lives in every apartment.”
Bessent’s net worth: $600 million.
He has a “place in the UK.”
He will not be affected by this.
So this isn’t really about immigration.
For the first time in American history, access to the banking system would be conditioned on proving citizenship to the federal government. That creates a permanent database linking every American’s finances to their citizenship status.
Once that database exists, it gets used by ICE, voting enforcement, tax enforcement, Social Security, and future administrations for purposes nobody has announced yet.
Every future government gets the keys to decide who has a bank account based on paperwork.
And Wall Street’s reaction tells you everything:
Bank execs privately called it “unworkable” and “a complete nightmare.” One researcher called it “a way to weaponize the banking system to achieve political ends.”
They’re not pushing back because they love immigrants. They just KNOW the compliance costs are catastrophic and half their customers will walk.
Tom Cotton also introduced a companion bill in March making it a federal crime for any unauthorized person to “open or maintain a US bank account.” Maintain. Meaning existing accounts.
These things are literally being drafted right now.
I’m surprised that all of this went under the radar.
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