Another representation of zeitgeist is advertising at the Super Bowl. For long-time readers, you may recall our selling Bitcoin way back before it nosedived. We highlighted that at the time there were crypto ads running wild at the Super Bowl. We even had Matt Damon shilling crypto. Remember that? Fun times.

Well, you know what dominated this year's Super Bowl? AI. It was in fact the single largest concentration of AI advertising in television history. Ain't that something.

16 tech companies bought Super Bowl ads: OpenAI, Google, Amazon, Meta, Anthropic, Genspark, Base44, Rippling, Ramp — and more. Tech ad spending is double what it was during the 2022 "Crypto Bowl."

And here we are again. Just with AI.

2000: The Dot-Com Bowl. 14 internet startups bought Super Bowl ads at $2.2 million per spot. Pets.com spent $1.2 million on that ridiculous but now-famous sock puppet commercial. Ten months later it joined Elvis. The stock went from $11 to zero. Eight of the 11 startups that advertised were bankrupt or sold for cents on the dollar within a year.

2022: The Crypto Bowl. FTX, Coinbase, Crypto.com, and eToro collectively spent $54 million on Super Bowl ads. Nine months later, FTX was bankrupt and Coinbase shares fell 70% within a year. By the time the next Super Bowl rolled around, crypto had zero representation.

So maybe this time is different. Maybe all these AI-related stocks — many of which are unprofitable, just like crypto and dotcoms — defy gravity and continue powering ahead. It is possible. But I would say improbable… despite the market thinking it not only possible but assured. And that is exactly why we have our hedge against a Nasdaq fall safely secured.

When Revolutionary Tech Needs a Marketing Budget
Alphabet is looking to issue a 100-year bond.

The last time this happened was Motorola in 1997 — the last year Motorola was considered a big deal.

At the start of 1997, Motorola was a top-25 market cap and top-25 revenue corporation in America. Never again! The Motorola corporate brand in 1997 was ranked #1 in the US, ahead of Microsoft. In 1998, Nokia overtook Motorola in mobile phones, and after the iPhone it fell out of the consumer eye entirely. Today Motorola is the 232nd-largest market cap with only $11 billion in sales.

Remember when Austria issued a 100-year sovereign bond? That pretty much bottom-ticked the bond market. But wait… there's more.

Big Tech is dropping $700 billion on AI this year. Their cash flow? Circling the drain.

Amazon's going into debt. Google's free cash flow is cratering 90%. And they're paying influencers $600K each to convince you AI is worth using. Nothing screams "revolutionary technology" quite like needing half a million per creator to sell it.

Then there's the earnings carnage…