I think Microsoft, as they often do, see the writing on the wall—the AI bubble bursting soon, taking AI-only businesses with them. What I see in this is a play to, at best, buy some extra good will with Anthropic so they can be first in line for the acquisition when the latter are tanking, or at worst (and more likely imo), get them dependent on Microsoft for revenue so that they have no other choice to be subsumed by them.

But I’ve been wrong about most economic/political predictions I’ve ever made, so we’ll see!

This is correct on an order of magnitude no single person can really wrap their brains around. Alphabet (the parent company of Google) made $121 billion in 2025. Not gross revenue—net profits (source). This “fine” is about 0.1% of what the execs and shareholders take home. That cost, in their revenue, wouldn’t register as any change within their accounting.

To call it a “rounding error” would be a huge exaggeration.

The truth is: if you have wealthy people asking if a bubble is real, and their friends who benefit from their investment deny it, the bubble it is real.