Chamath Palihapitiya(@chamath):VC investors have enabled the AI industry to bastardize revenue reporting. In the 2010s, SaaS companies popularized reporting the metric of Annual Run Rate because it was a reliable measure of long term, contractual revenues into the future. The key is that the revenues are contracted and guaranteed thru the contract life hence why forecasting it forward is appropriate. VCs have taken this to mean Annualized Run Rate when AI is concerned and where you take transactional/API revenue from the last month (or even last week in some cases) and forecast it forward. It’s insane that investors have enabled this to happen but it’s happened.

2026.10.15 16:00

VC investors have enabled the AI industry to bastardize revenue reporting. In the 2010s, SaaS companies popularized reporting the metric of Annual Run Rate because it was a reliable measure of long term, contractual revenues into the future. The key is that the revenues are contracted and guaranteed thru the contract life hence why forecasting it forward is appropriate. VCs have taken this to mean Annualized Run Rate when AI is concerned and where you take transactional/API revenue from the last month (or even last week in some cases) and forecast it forward. It’s insane that investors have enabled this to happen but it’s happened.