According to Business Insider, at the Cerebral Valley AI Conference, organizer Eric Newcomer surveyed over 300 attendees about which billion-dollar AI startup they’d bet against. Perplexity, the AI search browser, landed at the top of the most-shorted list, followed surprisingly by OpenAI in second place. Perplexity has been raising back-to-back funding rounds with valuations reportedly ranging from $14 billion to as high as $50 billion. Meanwhile, OpenAI faces skepticism despite generating $13 billion in revenue, with some investors concerned about its infrastructure spending commitments. The survey revealed near-unanimous agreement that we’re in an AI bubble, though attendees were divided on which companies would ultimately succeed.
Everyone sees the bubble
Here’s the thing about Silicon Valley – everyone knows there’s a bubble, but nobody wants to be the first to say which balloons are going to pop. This survey was unusual because it actually named names. In a world where VCs typically speak in vague generalities about market corrections, getting 300 insiders to anonymously point fingers is pretty revealing. And the results show that even the biggest names aren’t immune to skepticism.
Why Perplexity worries investors
Perplexity becoming the top short pick isn’t really surprising when you think about it. They’re trying to take on Google in search, which is basically the tech equivalent of challenging Godzilla to a fistfight. They’ve been raising money like crazy – back-to-back rounds every few months with those insane valuations between $14 billion and $50 billion. That kind of hypergrowth makes people nervous. It’s the classic bubble pattern: tons of hype, massive funding, but can they actually build a sustainable business against an 800-pound gorilla?
The OpenAI shocker
OpenAI at number two though? That’s the real eyebrow-raiser. This is the company that basically started the whole modern AI revolution. They’ve got $13 billion in revenue and ChatGPT is everywhere. But apparently even that isn’t enough to calm nerves about their spending. When investors hear about trillions in infrastructure commitments, they get twitchy. Sam Altman’s response to criticism was basically “if you don’t like it, sell your shares” – which is either confidence or defensiveness, depending on your perspective.
Living with the bubble
The most interesting part might be what happened next in the survey. When asked which companies they’d bet on, both Perplexity and OpenAI showed up on the positive side too. Anthropic led that list, reportedly exploring funding at a $350 billion valuation. So what’s really going on here? Basically, everyone agrees we’re in a bubble, but nobody can agree which companies will survive it. As Kleiner Perkins partner Ilya Fushman put it, every technology cycle is a bubble by definition. The question isn’t whether there’s a bubble – it’s which companies will be the enduring winners when it eventually deflates.
