Big B’s
It was a matter of time. Reading an article the other day about a bread and butter ‘analytic firm’ made me laugh when I saw this: …. In an April report titled “The Death of Leggings?,” the retail analyst group at AI technology company Edited tracked …..
….the category’s ongoing decline. “Looking at the assortment mix of bottoms across activewear brands, leggings have noted a substantial drop over the past three years,” Edited’s senior retail analyst Krista Corrigan wrote. In 2022 leggings were responsible for 46.9% of athleisure bottoms; in 2025, that figure fell to 38.7%.
Who would have thought reading about leggings would provoke a seemingly innocuous reference to a statement so big. Anyone remembering dot.com? Anyone remembering SaaS? Anyone remembering any technology trend and just about every company calling itself by that trend in order to provoke valuation, with-it-ness, and position themselves for coolness and relevance rather than what they really are?
I am sorry Edited. You are not an AI company. You are an analytic firm that uses AI alongside just about everyone on the planet in your sector or category of company. They are if they want to remain relevant anyway.
If this isn’t a sign of a bubble, I don’t know what is. But then, 24 hours after drafting this blog came:
Jerome Powell on signs of an AI bubble and an economy leaning too hard on the rich: ‘Unusually large amounts of economic activity’
There we are the ‘B’ word again…
Circa 2000 you were a dot.com, Amazon was a tech company instead of a bookseller morphed into a giant retailer. It uses technology like no tomorrow. It used technology to reinvent and disrupt retail. It was so great at technology AWS became real. But at its core it was a retailer competing with Walmart when it was all said and done.
Then came along SaaS, and then the variations that have followed — DaaS, PaaS. Let’s pray to God we don’t see AI as a Service. That acronym will be a downright problem.
For now, AI tech company NAME will have to do. It portends bad things, that’s all I can say. The moment we hear companies describe themselves this way, it’s time to brace ourselves for a bubble.
If we are left wondering, look no further than last week’s Series F over at Anthropic. $13 billion raised with a $183 billion valuation on $5 billion on revenue. Now look, $5 billion is definitely not chump change. But $183 big B’s on top of that? I don’t buy it.
Big B’s spell Bubble with a capital B because there is nothing about these valuations that make any sense.
It makes me glad I’ve read Another Way by Dave Whorton, chronicling the mentality of money over profits that took Silicon Valley by storm. He talks about the real value real companies have created as an alternative. It is a must-read if your interest lies in running a different kind of company — one that lasts.
He chronicles the era of Silicon Valley I grew up in post college, early career, and watching the culture of it morph into something not-so-nice. The big tech bros are living it up with the big B’s while they wish for the rest of the world to subsist on universal income, telling us how great it’s going to be. Somehow Mr. Powell seems more believable. We are left to sort it out while we pay $5.50 for a gallon of gas, $10 for a dozen eggs, all while wrapping our heads around $183 billion valuations.
The numbers just don’t add up. But hey, if it gets you extra zeros go ahead and call yourself an AI technology company. It’s a term about to sprout like weeds until everything comes crashing down. Just watch.