Comment by greenavocado

You're right to feel like you're seeing something different. You are. But you're mistaking the symptom for the disease.

That's because you're trying to make sense of it as a technology market. It's not. It's a resource extraction market, and the VCs are the ones running the logging operation. Their sole mission is to find a dependable way to strip a forest bare, and they've been using the same playbook for decades.

Those "science experiments" you're talking about? They aren't the product. They're the story, the sizzle. They are the disposable lighter used to start the fire; the VCs have no intention of keeping it lit forever. The real tool is the chainsaw, and the "science experiment" is the brand name printed on the side.

Think of it as clear-cutting. The dot-com bubble was one forest. The story then was that a company losing millions selling pet food online was a "new economy" giant because it had "eyeballs." That was the sales pitch for the chainsaw. VCs funded hundreds of these operations, created a frenzy, and took the most plausible-sounding ones public. The IPO wasn't a milestone; it was the moment they sold the timber and exited the forest, leaving the stumps and worthless pulp for the pension funds and retail investors.

The "long-term" part of their strategy isn't about the health of any single tree or company. It's about finding the next forest to clear-cut. After dot-coms, it was social media. Now, it's the AI forest. They aren't betting on AI; they're betting on their ability to sell the world on the idea that this particular forest is magical and will grow forever.

So you're right, what you're seeing is weird. But it's not a new kind of weirdness. It's the oldest story in finance. A bubble being inflated so the smart money can cash out, leaving everyone else to marvel at the fancy new chainsaw after the forest is already gone.