AI Companies Are Burning Billions — And Nobody Seems to Care

By 2026, Silicon Valley’s AI gold rush has reached a fever pitch. Investors poured an eye-watering $80 billion into foundation AI companies last year alone — startups building massive, general-purpose AI systems designed to be the brains behind everything from chatbots to autonomous software. But here’s the catch: not a single one of these companies has turned a profit. In fact, most haven’t even come close to breaking even.

So, naturally, you might ask: is anyone actually trying to make money from all this AI hype?

According to TechCrunch AI editor Russell Brandom, the answer is a resounding “not really, no.”

To make sense of the chaotic AI landscape, Brandom devised a clever five-tier ranking system — not based on financial success (because, let’s be honest, there isn’t much of that), but on how hard these companies are trying to make money. It’s a vibes-based metric, measuring ambition over actual results.

The scale ranges from level five — “we are already making millions of dollars every day, thank you very much” — down to level one: “true wealth is when you love yourself.”

Let’s dive into the madness.

Level 3: “We Have Many Promising Product Ideas”

Take humans&, a relatively quiet AI startup with a name that looks like a typo but has been getting plenty of glowing press lately. Despite raising $480 million at a $4.48 billion valuation, humans& has yet to articulate a single concrete product it plans to ship. It’s all promises and visions, earning it a solid level three rating.

Level 1: “True Wealth Is When You Love Yourself”

Then there’s Safe Superintelligence (SSI), founded by Ilya Sutskever, the eccentric former chief scientist of OpenAI. SSI is so committed to its vague, pie-in-the-sky vision of “superintelligent AI” that it turned down a $32 billion acquisition offer from Meta — an incredibly generous offer for a company that had yet to generate any revenue at the time of its $20 billion valuation.

As Brandom puts it: “There are no product cycles, and, aside from the still-baking superintelligent foundation model, there doesn’t seem to be any product at all. With this pitch, [Sutskever] raised $3 billion!”

Level 2: “We Have the Outlines of a Concept of a Plan”

Thinking Machines Lab, co-founded by Mira Murati (former CTO and briefly CEO of OpenAI during the infamous Sam Altman mutiny), was once a darling of the AI world. But lately, it’s been spiraling into chaos. High-level officials have been defecting to other AI companies, and the startup has devolved into what the New York Times called a “perpetual soap opera.” Brandom suggests it might be due for a downgrade from level four to level two.

The Bottom Line

If confidence could be bottled and sold, these companies would be profitable on day one. But in reality, the AI boom is less about building sustainable businesses and more about chasing the next big thing — consequences be damned.

As Brandom’s ranking system hilariously illustrates, the AI industry is less a marketplace and more a collective fever dream, fueled by billions in venture capital and the unshakable belief that profits will come… eventually.

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