Emad Mostaque, founder and CEO of Stability AI, speaks during the Bloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco, California, US, on Thursday, June 22, 2023.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Artificial intelligence will be the biggest bubble of all time, according to the CEO of open-source AI company Stability AI.
Speaking with UBS analysts on a call last week, Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque said of artificial intelligence: “I think this will be the biggest bubble of all time.” He added that it is still at the very early stages and not ready for mass-scale adoption in industries like banking just yet.
“I call it the ‘dot AI’ bubble, and it hasn’t even started yet,” he said.
Stability AI is the company behind Stable Diffusion, one of the other more popular generative AI tools aside from OpenAI.
Stable Diffusion allows users to generate photo-realistic images by inputting text. It has more than a million users and has raised over $100 million from investors including Coatue and Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Mostaque, its co-founder and CEO, has been accused of making misleading claims about his background, achievements, and partnerships. He disputed the claims one by one in a detailed response on his personal blog.
Generative AI has captivated the imagination of many an academic, boardroom executive, and even school student, for its ability to produce humanlike language and visual content from scratch in response to user prompts by using vast amounts of data.
AI has long been around, with the technology now a common feature of online browsing, social media platforms, and home assistants. Beyond consumer applications, the technology is being used in medicine, transportation, robotics, science, education, finance, defense, and other industries.
However, a more novel form of AI which has come about recently is generative AI, which is used in tools such as the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT, from U.S. tech firm OpenAI, as well as Google Bard and Microsoft Bing Chat, and image generators like Dall-E, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney.
Mostaque said that the total amount of investment needed in AI was likely to be $1 trillion “because it’s more important than 5G as infrastructure for knowledge,” and suggested banks like UBS would have to adopt the technology as it is a “massive market.”
But, he added, it is at the “early stages” of development right now.
“It’s not quite ready” to be deployed at scale within large industries like financial services, “but we can see the value,” Mostaque said.
Mostaque said that companies that do not use AI appropriately in their businesses will be “punished” by the stock market.
He cited the example of Google, which lost $100 billion in a single day after its Bard AI chatbot gave inaccurate information in a promotional video upon its release. Google is competing aggressively with Microsoft to win in the race to build superior AI tools.
“I think this is real. I think that there aren’t many investable opportunities here, and you’ll see people moving from the best chip manufacturers to companies that are using this to impact their bottom line and their top line appropriately. And you will see the market punishing those that don’t use this,” Mostaque said.
“This will be one of the biggest investment themes over the next few years,” he added.
Affirm CEO Max Levchin said Friday that while the buy now, pay later firm isn’t seeing credit stress among federally employed borrowers due to the government shutdown, there are signs of a change in shopping habits.
“We are seeing a very subtle loss of interest in shopping just for that group, and a couple of basis points,” Levchin told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.”
At least 670,000 federal employees have been furloughed in the shutdown, and about 730,000 are working without pay, the Bipartisan Policy Center said this week.
Levchin said he’s closely watching employment data for signs of major disruptions, but the company is “capable” of adjusting credit standards when needed.
“Right now, things are just fine,” he said. “We’re not seeing any major disturbances at all.”
The federal funding lapse, which began Oct. 1, is the longest in U.S. history and has halted work across agencies with an impact beyond those who are government employees. The SNAP food benefit program, which serves 42 million Americans, has also been cut off.
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The comments from Levchin followed a fiscal first-quarter earnings report that blew past Wall Street’s estimates. Affirm posted earnings of 23 cents per share on $933 million in revenue. Analysts polled by LSEG expected earnings of 11 cents per share on $883 million in sales.
Revenues climbed 34% from a year ago, while gross merchandise volumes jumped 42% to $10.8 billion from $7.6 billion a year ago. That surpassed Wall Street’s $10.38 billion estimate.
The fintech company, which went public in 2021, also lifted its full-year outlook, saying it now expects gross merchandise volume to hit $47.5 billion, versus prior guidance of $46 billion.
Affirm also said it renewed its partnership with Amazon through 2031. The company has also inked deals with the likes of Shopify and Apple in a competitive e-commerce landscape.
Levchin said categories such as ticketing and travel have seen an uptick in interest, and consumer shopping remains strong. Active consumers grew to 24.1 million from 19.5 million a year ago.
“We’re every single day out there preaching the gospel of buy now, pay later being the better way to buy, and consumers are obviously responding,” he said.
Block shares fell 10% Friday after weak third-quarter earnings fell short of Wall Street expectations and showed slowing profit growth for the company’s Square service.
Here is how the company did compared with LSEG estimates:
Earnings per share: 54 cents adjusted vs. 67 cents expected
Revenue: $6.11 billion vs. $6.31 billion expected
Revenue for the quarter was up 2% over last year. The Jack Dorsey-founded firm’s shares have fallen 24% year to date.
Square’s gross payment volume was up 12% year over year, but gross profit growth for the point-of-sale service was only up 9% over a year ago, slowing from last quarter’s 11%.
The company attributed the slower growth to a processing partner change and lower-margin hardware sales.
“Our product and go-to-market strategies are working as we continued to gain profitable market share in our target verticals like food and beverage, with larger sellers, and outside the U.S.,” Chief Financial Officer Amrita Ahuja said on the earnings call.
Cash App’s gross profit growth fared much better at $1.62 billion, increasing 24% over a year ago with 58 million monthly transacting active users. The strength was driven by the service’s Cash App Borrow, Cash App Card, and Buy Now Pay Later.
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Morgan Stanley analysts wrote that they were “encouraged by the pace of credit expansion at Cash App” and are focused on “whether credit expansion will ultimately produce better inflows” per active customer and increase direct deposit accounts.
Ahuja said gross profit was a bright spot for Block, as the company reported $2.66 billion in gross profit growth, up 18% over the prior year. FactSet expected $2.60 billion in gross profit for the quarter.
The company raised its full-year guidance to expect a $10.2 billion gross profit for 2025, increasing from last quarter’s projection of $10.2 billion.
Block reported net income of $461.54 million, or 74 cents per share, which was up significantly over a year ago when the company reported net income of $283.75 million, or 45 cents per share.
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Block year-to-date stock chart.
CNBC’s MacKenzie Sigalos contributed to this report.
Archer Aviation‘s stock plummeted 12% after a share sale overshadowed a narrower-than-expected third-quarter loss.
The company posted a net loss $129.9 million, narrower than the FactSet estimate of a $178.6 million loss.
However, Archer disclosed a $650 million stock offering for 81.25 million shares to support its $126 million acquisition of Hawthorne Airport in Los Angeles as a hub for air taxi operations there. Archer was chosen as the official air taxi provider for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
The move would dilute the value of the stock for existing shareholders. The weighted average for Archer shares outstanding has grown to about 660.9 million from 397.5 million a year ago.
Interest in electric aircraft makers has picked up in recent months as major players have edged closer to certification. Earlier this week, Beta Technologies went public on the NYSE.
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Archer, like its competitors, is taking major steps toward achieving Federal Aviation Administration certification, a key approval needed to fly commercially.
For the current quarter, Archer said it expects a loss between $110 million and $140 million for adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, a loss of $125 million at the midpoint. Analysts expected a loss of $119.9 million, according to FactSet.
Earlier this week, Joby Aviation reported a wider-than-expected third-quarter loss. Shares have slumped 20% over the last week, while Archer has lost nearly a third of its value. Both companies have more than doubled in value over the last year.
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Archer Aviation and Joby Aviation year-to-date stock chart.