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Comment by Sol- | Hacker News Reader

Is there any indication that such a bailout was even planned or is this just populist tilting at windmills?

It is preemptive. Everyone can see the bubble and these companies are barrelling forwarding anyway. It is reckless and irresponsible.

I've seen lots of bubbles. I remember thinking Amazon was a bubble in the .com days...

Companies themselves can’t be economic bubbles. Amazon survived the economic bubble it was in, but many others didn’t.

You mean the dot com bubble, which was in fact a major bubble that caused a lot of huge financial issues in the country? You'd think someone on a tech forum would have heard of it, but I suppose some of us would rather make asinine clapback comments than think about what we're saying.

I mean Amazon. There were lots of companies part of the .com bubble that did fail. Amazon did not though.

Individual companies are not bubbles

What's the point of basing decisions on outliers?

It was part of the bubble. Amazon's stock lost over 90% of it's value. The company survived, but many other companies did not. A bubble does not mean a company fails just that valuations are too high and that there will be a massive correction over a short period of time. Some companies fail, others survive.

So if a few AI companies survive but most go bankrupt in the next 5 years, which is almost certainly what will happen, it will not have been a bubble?

What's your short position?

Market can remain irrational longer than I can remain solvent.

Also, if I lose my money I am not in position to get bailout.

Also, shorting requires managing to not only predict drop in price but also when it will happen.

Also, I do not have large amount of money investable into risky instruments.

Shorting is always riskier because you have to time the trade. But I have moved exclusively to bonds.

What's your long position? You can't pick winners or losers in a bubble. All the leading AI companies are valuing themselves as if they each own the entire TAM without any clear moat. It's obviously not going to work out.

I own a bunch of tech stocks.

It was a bubble.

Bubbles don't mean the tech won't one day be great and materialize into something great.

They mean there is a mismatch in valuations/equity/debt to revenue today, putting far too much emphasis far too quickly on potential revenue some time tomorrow.

And how many of their peers survived?

The vast majority of companies failed almost immediately.

> the .com days...

Oh, you mean the period that is colloquially referred to as "the .com bubble?

More recently the ride sharing Bubble.

For years the consensus on Hacker News was that the ride share companies were a bubble and it was all going to collapse. Nobody would pay profitable rates once the early discounted rides ended, everyone said.

Then the rideshare companies became sustainable and they’re accepted as a normal part of life.

> rideshare companies

Do you mean taxi companies?

Are you arguing that the government shouldn't be prepared?

Yes AI company, right there , I like it like that.!

Sam Altman has been pushing for the US to own a chunk of OpenAI since February 2025. Literally the earliest he could get back into the Oval Office after the inauguration.

A bailout is part of their planning.

A bailout has been the plan for probably 10 years.

Seems plausible, yeah — certainly seems like something that would have been on their minds even five years ago.

I couldn't find an story suggesting OpenAI broached this subject with the Biden administration.

Whereas it's actually possible that the whole "sovereign wealth fund" idea Trump has (shaking down companies for a share) might have got into his head from the AI people.

It's not just populist tilting at windmills.

There's an existing concept of and precedent for, "Too big to fail." The wikipedia article gets the idea across [0].

This creates an implied "insurance" program, tilting the risk profile toward being aggressive. Taking a moon shot isn't so scary when you think the government will probably step in if it blows up bad enough.

This fluffy, political statement is a message: don't count on it.

Perhaps it will give investors/executives a few thoughts on preparing to deal with a potential blowup themselves?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_big_to_fail

It’s populism. The minute a big chunk of the voters face real pain you will hear cries for bailouts

It’s a resolution, so pure fluff. That said, a prohibition on bailing out this sector in particular might make it possible to claw back anything this regime illegally gives.

For some reason* the rhetoric is focused on bank bailouts in 2008, but the more direct analogy is the auto bailouts in 2008, which weren't strictly necessary but did protect an industry many Americans felt attached to. I think it's reasonable to worry that the same thing could happen to AI companies.

* yes, I know what the reason is

It's just convention at this point in the 21st century. No indication of a plan is needed when it's the only outcome to be expected.

Then the bill will never become relevant and it’ll just be a waste of time and you can laugh at it in hindsight. And I’m sure none of these companies will lobby against it, since it’s just tilting at windmills and won’t mean anything.

Oh I’m laughing at it now, no need to wait for hindsight

You’re far too entertained by a perceived waste of time but you do you I guess

Yes, it has been discussed a year ago in the Govt circles that AI will be bailed out.

https://youtu.be/FvBf9HBT_F8?t=1672

I have no idea who would they even bailout. Investors? Why? What for? What would that change?

Bailing out banks made some sense so that they couldn't operate. Without the bailout there would be no more banks and a hundred million of people left on the ice.

If you want to keep AI operating you can just (temporarily?) ban investors from tearing down the AI companies they invested in for parts. You could say they are important for national security or something. I'm sure they are already earning enough to keep the lights on. Just not enout to give investors payback for insate capital expediture to set up.

Such ban wolud the governement zero, especially if you write the law well enough, so that it can't be succesfully challenged in court.

> Without the bailout there would be no more banks

> and a hundred million of people left on the ice

That is not true. There would be a lot of banks and people would have lost only part of their money.

Yeah, probably it wouldn't be as bad as they made it seem to be, but still, there was a reasoning behind the bailout. I see not reasoning for AI bailout.

The investment to date has been ridiculous and undisciplined. It’s very hard to understand the valuations of these companies. If this wasn’t an election year I think there would be more oversight and critical review. But we have a very unserious party in charge right now.

It’s good that it’s being discussed. We’re tired of the wealth class privatizing the profits and leaving us to cover the costs.

There are almost certainly bank execs who are looking at Anthropic's IPO and thinking "if it crashes, we'll get bailed out". Saying "no you won't" now, before the IPO, when it has a chance to affect peoples' behavior, is a worthwhile thing to do.

How? Since when do banks care about IPO crashes? A lot of IPOs crashed after listing; I can’t remember a single time when a bailout was needed after an IPO.

The latter.

Nope. The balance sheet of big tech companies are healthy enough not to need to bailout anyways. AI startups can of course fail.

The tech oligarchs have spent good money bribing Trump to let them do whatever they want, you better believe they’re expecting a bailout. It’s naive to think otherwise.

David Sacks has been a bit sidelined by the regime, but he was the one lobbying for the bailout of Silicon Valley Bank (under the Democrats!).

So there will be a huge pressure. Trump Jr. and the Kushners are invested in all sorts of bubbly assets, too.

The Democrats should do this however, and if they win the midterms keep their promises for once and block everything. Then 2028 is easy.

I agree with much of your sentiment, but if the lack of bailout (which let me reiterate, I agree with) leads to a recession, it will kill the D chances in 2028. They will apply this calculus to their political behavior, and (as is typical for the Ds) will do nothing.

Promises in the wind.

The Democrats I suspect are planning on doing the exact opposite unfortunately. They were very wimpy on the bubbly ai stuff under Biden, why would they change when they don't get punished from their own constituents for going against their promises. Same party apparatus as a whole that existed under Kamala. We need a Trump style clean out of the Democratic party because the brand is as bad as the Republican brand at this point. I can't with surity say that the Democrats are going to do anything to reign in big tech, all I can hope for is that they will be slightly better than trump or if not that, no worse.

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