Source: Morning Brew
After months of venture capital euphoria, fundamental questions about whether current AI models can actually scale profitably are resurfacing. Companies have burned through massive compute budgets without proportional revenue, and as training costs plateau against diminishing returns, the pressure to justify multibillion-dollar valuations based on tangible products—not research papers—is intensifying. The market is recalibrating toward unit economics and real-world performance rather than speculative hype. This reflects a return to basic startup math that the previous cycle skipped, not existential doubt about AI itself.