making a bigger bang when things go pop!

I would argue this not circular deals. Nvidia has an interest in supporting the AI and AGI research and development. The amounts of money they are investing are barely rounding errors too. If AGI happens, then this will unlock trillions for all these companions for just billions in investment... I remember when Nortel was doing vendor financing for all these deadbeat companies to buy their equipment. It ruined them because they were trying to artificially boost their stock price, and not investing in those companies to help try and support progress.

They've already ripped off the entire internet's content already, so all they can do is hallucinate new knowledge without human validation. We already seen tumbles in the markets the last few days, our economy is rapidly facing the "we ate everything" scenario where the only way out is economic cannibalism. Expect a lot of ewaste and polluted water from this bubble bursting.

> 'Circular' AI Mega-Deals by AI and Hardware Giants are Raising Eyebrows

Given who owns/runs these companies, I'm thinking "Jerks in a circle" -- but... it seems a bit wordy. :-)

> Some worry that the more closely companies intertwine, the more susceptible they are to creating a bubble, or a market not actually supported by real consumer demand

Do investors count as consumers? All I see is Doctorow's trend of enshitification, justifying the removal as many employees as possible until real consumers are paying real money and getting self-service in return.

"If NVDA has to provide the capital that becomes its revenues in order to maintain growth, the whole ecosystem may be unsustainable"

Lucent did this in the late 90s, covering up their ruse with clever accounting that wasn't so clever when it was discovered. This tanked the company and the stock. However, what Lucent did is more like AMD's recent deal rather than what Nvidia's deal with OpenAI. Neither Lucent nor AMD did quid pro quo deals but rather a large outright gift to the customer just so they could technically record a large sale. Nvidia's deals are also geared towards pushing sales. However, instead of giving away NVDA shares, they are receiving OpenAI shares, more like a quid pro quo.

"We are in a phase of the build-out where the entire industry's got to come together and everybody's going to do super well," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told the Wall Street Journal on Monday.

This makes no sense. There is no emerging market where "everybody's going to do super well." That's always a lie. There will be a bloodbath, which has been true of every single emerging market ever. Most players today will fail. Only a few will eventually remain, and they will be the only ones that will do "super well."

OpenAI is way behind its main competitors (the hyperscalars) because it loses money and has no cash flow cow. OpenAI is likely one of the ones that will fail unless there is a significant paradigm change.

Those of us who were around for the web 1.0 boom should remember marchFIRST. It was the dotcom enabler with its own VC arm. marchFIRST would get investors to give it money that it invested in startups. Then the startups would use the money to pay marchFIRST for branding services. And web design services. Then backend development. Followed by hosting. Then marchFIRST started over with another bullshit startup. And everybody at marchFIRST was getting bonkers salaries, free lunches, and playing pool at the off

I long ago gave up trying to understand crypto. And If I just don't understand something, I don't invest in it. So this is all just mildly interesting noise.

"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." - Keynes