Running for their life...
The FCF Race
Every AI company is a runner on a treadmill that keeps speeding up. The belt is depreciation: chips lose value the moment they’re plugged in, and power bills and interest costs make it move faster still. Cash flow is the runner’s legs.
If revenue grows faster than the belt, the business advances. If not, a company can sprint, spend billions and look futuristic, yet slide backward the whole time.
Right now only a few runners are gaining ground. The race isn’t over, but the crowd is thinning. And some investors will discover they weren’t backing a runner at all. They were cheering for the treadmill.