Why This Isn't the Dot-Com Bubble | Martin Casado on WSJ's BOLD NAMES

What if everyone who's calling this a bubble has forgotten what a real bubble actually looks like? The first live video stream on the Internet was a coffee pot. In 1991, a Cambridge researcher pointed a camera at the break room pod so he'd know whether there was coffee before walking downstairs. People called it a toy, a gimmick with no serious application. The coffee pot webcam, in no small way, became Netflix. The pattern repeats. Every major technology wave starts with use cases that look trivial, and every time, skeptics confuse silliness with insignificance. Thirty years later, hundreds of billions of dollars are pouring into AI infrastructure. Consultants estimate the current spending would require AI revenue to grow 40 x by 2030 to justify it. The .com comparisons write themselves. But the .com crash wasn't just overvalued stocks. It was a fiber glut financed by WorldCom, a company with 40,000,000,000 in debt that was cooking its books compounded by 09/11. The companies funding today's AI build out have hundreds of billions of cash on their balance sheet. Comparing valuations isn't the same as predicting systemic collapse. That distinction matters. This conversation examines what separates a speculative correction from an economic crisis and why this moment may look more like the mobile or cloud booms than .com. Martin Casado is a general partner at a sixteen z, and a few months ago, he joined the Wall Street Journal's bold names podcast. We're sharing that discussion here. You know, it's interesting. You were in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, during the last bubble bursting. What are the signs you're gonna be looking for that San Francisco's in a bubble again? I mean, the late night is just so wild. I mean, I think people forget. I think it takes maybe twenty years to forget what these things look like. It was the limos, the parties. It was the taxi drivers offering stock tips. I mean, like, the janitor at one of the startups my friend worked at, like, didn't wanna get paid in cash, wanted to get paid in equity. It was just total total chaos. You know, that's not where we are right now. I mean, I think we just forgot what a true bubble looks like. Today on Bold Names, we have Martin Casado. He is a general partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz where he is responsible for their billion dollar infrastructure practice. And, Mintz, going into this episode, I think we had one big question for Martine. Are we in a new tech bubble? This time fueled by all of that excitement around AI. And also fueled by debt, specifically the debt these companies are taking on in order to pay for that AI infrastructure. It's a huge multibillion dollar bet. It's unclear if it's gonna pay off. But for answers, let's hear from Martine. From The Wall Street Journal, I'm Christopher Mims. And I'm Tim Higgins. This is Bold Names, where you'll hear from the …