SAN FRANCISCO — In what economists are calling "the most devastating use of elementary arithmetic since the 2008 financial crisis," IBM CEO Arvind Krishna has single-handedly dismantled the $8 trillion artificial general intelligence industry using nothing more than a restaurant napkin and the kind of division problems typically assigned to fourth-graders.
"That's a belief," Krishna said during a recent podcast appearance, responding to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's assertion that his company would generate returns on its $1.4 trillion in commitments. "That's what some people like to chase." The statement, delivered with the quiet confidence of a man who has watched every tech hype cycle since Reagan, has sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley's faith-based financial community.
The napkin math is, sources confirm, devastating in its simplicity: $80 billion to fill a one-gigawatt data center, multiplied by the 100 gigawatts currently committed globally, equals $8 trillion in capital expenditure. That $8 trillion requires approximately $800 billion in annual profit just to service the interest. For context, that figure exceeds the GDP of Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, and the entire global advertising industry combined.
Making matters worse, Krishna noted that the AI chips powering these temples of computation depreciate so rapidly that operators must "throw it away and refill it" every five years. The industry is, in effect, constructing the most expensive disposable infrastructure in human history — monuments to ambition that will be e-waste before the concrete fully cures.
"I saved $8 trillion and all I got was this napkin."
When asked about the probability of achieving AGI — the theoretical moment when artificial intelligence surpasses human cognition across all tasks — Krishna offered odds of "zero to one percent" without a further technological breakthrough. For perspective, those odds are worse than being struck by lightning in your lifetime (1 in 15,300), becoming a movie star (1 in 1.5 million), or finding a tech CEO who understands depreciation (1 in 7).
"Even then, I'm a 'maybe,'" Krishna added, in what sources describe as the most IBM sentence ever constructed. The statement contained no promises, no vision, and no marketing — just the quiet acknowledgment of a man who has seen things.
The confession arrives amid a growing chorus of AGI skepticism from technology leaders not currently burning investor capital. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has described the AGI push as "hypnosis." Google Brain founder Andrew Ng called it "overhyped." Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch labeled it "a marketing move." The pattern is notable: every executive not holding the bag can clearly see the bag is empty.
Perhaps most damning is the testimony of Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI's cofounder and one of the architects of modern AI. In November, Sutskever announced that "the age of scaling is over," and that even 100x increases in computing power "would not be completely transformative." Translation: the man who built the rocket just announced there is no moon, but somehow the fuel keeps loading.
"It's back to the age of research again, just with big computers," Sutskever said — a statement that, in Silicon Valley parlance, means "we have no idea what we're doing, but now with more electricity."
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"Numbers are just vibes with decimal points."
The electricity demands alone strain credulity. In an October letter to the White House, Altman formally requested that the federal government add 100 gigawatts of new energy capacity per year — enough to power approximately 75 million American homes. The ask was not framed as audacious. It was framed as necessary. Somewhere, a climate scientist is updating their apocalypse models.
Meanwhile, Michael Burry — the investor immortalized in "The Big Short" for predicting the 2008 housing collapse — has begun taking positions against Nvidia, citing depreciation concerns. When the man who saw the last $8 trillion disaster coming starts shorting your industry, you are not in a bubble. You are in the part of the movie where the music gets tense.
To be clear, Krishna did not dismiss AI entirely. "I think it's going to unlock trillions of dollars of productivity in the enterprise," he said of current tools. The chatbots work. The copilots work. The automation works. What doesn't work, apparently, is the multi-trillion-dollar bet that building more of it will summon a digital god.
The sleight of hand, critics note, is bundling the thing that works with the thing that doesn't. AI is profitable. AGI is a prayer. But by conflating them, believers can dismiss skepticism of the fantasy as denial of reality. They're selling you a bicycle by promising a teleporter.
As of press time, OpenAI had announced a new $6.6 billion funding round, valued at $157 billion. The investment thesis, according to sources familiar with the matter, is "belief."
Krishna was unavailable for comment. He was last seen at a diner, doing long division on a napkin.
Reason: We regret to inform commenters that this thread has devolved into (1) VCs admitting they can't do math, (2) multiple users claiming to be either Sam Altman or sentient AI, (3) someone derailing into a 47-comment thread about Denny's pancakes, and (4) what appears to be an actual AI having an existential crisis in real-time.
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— The Moderation Team (which is definitely not a napkin)