Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon might get through easily as companies. I don't think all G/M/M/A staff will get through easily.
Azure is a product all right, but there’s nothing particularly better there than anywhere else.
They are one of the few companies actually making money with AI as they have intelligently leveraged the position of Office 365 in companies to sell Copilot. Their AI investment plans are, well, plans which could be scaled down easily. Worst case scenario for them is their investment in OpenAI becoming worthless.
It would hurt but is hardly life threatening. Their revenue driver is clearly their position at the heart of entreprise IT and they are pretty much untouchable here.
And even then, if that happens when the bubble pops, they'll likely just acquire OpenAI on the cheap. Thanks to the current agreement, it already runs on Azure, they already have access to OpenAI's IP, and Microsoft has already developed all their Copilots on top of it. It would be near-zero cost for Microsoft at that point to just absorb them and continue on as they are today.
Microsoft isn't going anywhere, for better or for worse.
Despite them pissing off users with Windows, what HN forgets, is they aren't Microsoft's customer. The individual user/consumer never was. We may not want what MS is selling, but their enterprise customers definitely do.
Google is only place that serves the enterprise (Workspace for productivity, Cloud for IT, Devices for end users) AND conducts meaningful AI research.
AWS doesn't (they can sell cloud effectively, but don't have any meaningful in-house AI R&D), Meta doesn't (they don't cover enterprise and, frankly, nobody trusts Zuck... and they're flaky.
Oracle doesn't. They have grown their cloud business rapidly by 1) easy button for Oracle on-prem to move to OCI, and 2) acting like a big colo for bare metal "cloud" infra. No AI.
Open AI has fundamental research and is starting to have products, but it's still niche. Same as Anthropic. They're not in the same ball game as the others, and they're going to continue to pay billions to the hyperscalers annually for infra, too.
This is Google's game to lose, imho, but the biggest loser will be AWS (not Azure/Microsoft).
Tesla (P/E: 273, PEG: 16.3) the car maker without robots, robotaxis is less than 15% of the Tesla valuation at best. When the AI hype dies, selloff starts and negative sentiment hits, we have below $200B market cap company.
It will hurt Elon mentally. He will need a hug.