Jared Bernstein and I are looking at the AI labs this week.
We show they're losing money in historically large amounts and fast, too; e.g. OpenAI has lost nearly 75% of the amount of money Uber cumulatively lost over 8 years. We also highlight their fragile financing structures
One pretty cheap way for hyperscalers to get additional datacenter compute would be to use their giant cash piles to massively short Bitcoin for an extended period of time, causing the miners to go bankrupt, and then buying their assets in bankruptcy.
All perfectly legal, too!