Blain’s Morning Porridge Nov 18^th, 2025 – AI is dead! Long Live AI!

“It’s the end of the world all over again…”

Headlines about a deepening stock sell off, the rising “fear” gauge, and unsustainable valuations, are dominating the news flow. Relax. End of the world market crashes happen all the time. Sit back and enjoy the show. Get your buying boots ready.

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“No company is going to be immune , including us” said Sundar Pichai of Google. Peter Theil has sold out of Nvidia. When one of my chums, a “creative” up in London, asked on Sunday if she should invest in AI, you know it’s way too late. Even the BBC has noticed the AI bubble might be a bust…

But it won’t be the end of the World… Something new will emerge.

There was a time, not long ago, when calling the end of the AI bubble would have made me a contrarian. Not anymore. It’s the new consensus. Before launching into this morning’s Porridge on why AI is going to become a massively profitable utility post the inevitable correction. Let me just post a warning: There is a chance… a small one, that a market correction now develops into something much, much worse that will trigger bond markets and global chaos…. but why worry now about something we’re only going to have to worry about later…

This morning its AI is Dead, Long Live AI!

Not everyone agrees. One of my AI loving clients told me he’s still full on and will keep buying. He’s reckoning the sheer depth of AI possibilities to change the economy, and the fact the datacentres now being built are being built to service current AI demand rather than speculative future demand is the sign of ongoing upside. He’s looking at firms likely to be acquired by big tech to build out their AI ambitions on signs of weakness.

Neither is he relying on the market expanding. It’s here and now! This is not “build it and they will come” anticipation of an opportunity, but … “they are here wondering where their data centre is…” He’s looking at a sidebar into energy investments as that’s the potential spoke in further build out of AI infrastructure. And, as he points out, the way the Big AI firms are funding datacentres is to transfer the risk to external funders. Might cause the equivalent of a bank run in Private Credit markets – but the Tech firms themselves should be ok – ish.

I still reckon an AI purge is coming… a refocus back on returns and reality. I am convinced it will consume Sam Altman and Open AI in what will become the Lehman Brothers moment of the AI correction… But it will not be end of the world.

A healthy dose of creative destruction in the form of a Biblical flood clearing the crowded and overpriced AI ecosystem could prove a damn fine thing over the medium term for Tech Lords and smart investors. A wave of destruction will allow a thousand flowers to bloom. Problem is the field will be in the colours of a very few names like Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Palantir, and maybe Apple. Everything else? I am thinking less likely.

History shows most corporates only remain stupendously rich a couple of decades before the next new, new thing replaces them. That’s a cycle we’ve seen for centuries as railways were superseded by oil, autos, chemicals, consumer goods, etc. But now the current crop of Big Tech has dominated the US corporate ecosystem for 2 decades. That’s an awful long time. Have the rules changed?

Below I’ll share a vision of how future AI is going to succeed, but the fact something will emerge stronger from an AI purge should have folk thinking now about the quick and the dead.

For instance, I’ve already said OpenAI is the walking dead. Its $1.5 trillion web of deals is an unfinanceable pompous circularity. It will probably bury Oracle in its wake. It will never earn the profits to persuade markets to fund its build-out. SoftBank is going flaccid on its commitment to the Stargate project which is running slow, and Masa Son has sold his entire $6 bln stake in Nvidia, which is going to face its own death match from China AI-tech alternatives. Watch as the pipedreams around Open-AI’s ambitions unravel as the signal the current AI edifice shatters, triggering the deeper correction.

Which also means this is probably a very good time to be thinking about which names will survive the AI Bubble, emerging stronger, more powerful and best positioned to monetise our future. Top of my list is Alphabet on the basis I don’t trust them as far as I could throw them… but hey-hoe, they will make money if they can dominate the customer interfaces of AI. Pichai may have said no company is immune, but some as less vulnerable than others. I’m fascinated by Palantir, but it doesn’t make any sense to buy at these levels.

What does the future hold?

In a couple of years, we will all be wondering what Safari, Chrome and the other search engines ever were. They will as alien as dial up modems. Our inter-reactions and web-searching of the World outside will be through our AI – which will become ever more focused magical money machines, making the Tech Lords who survive the coming purge fantabalously wealthier. All the firms promising to help us intro AI into our businesses and futures will either have staked their places or become irrelevant. AI will be a utility like business dominated by the big firms.

Our lives probably won’t feel much different, but they will be managed and monetised to an ever-increasing degree. Domestic life will revolve around our AI Agent(s) buying us the best and cheapest widgets it helps us discover we might need from the web. It will know what’s in the fridge and will coordinate our weekly shopping. We will forget what application forms were. The AI will simply tell you it’s got you a better car insurance deal – saving you £20, while earning Google a £20 for reallocating your life to the firm that was willing to pay it the highest return for it doing so…

Over coffee I might say to Mrs Blain that I fancy a nice steak, and the kitchen AI will interrupt us to tell us Jake the Butcher has got some excellent Black Dexter Rumps – because Jake’s AI Agent is currently paying client AI Agents’ the highest share of each sale to put his steaks top of the suggestion list in our area. Nicky and I agree Jake’s an excellent butcher, knows his steaks (he really does) and 20 minutes later they arrive by drone. Everyone is happy. Jake’s AI will have done the whole trade for him, earning its owner a healthy cut as well. The only human moments will be one of Jake’s lads unplugging a drone from the charger and putting the steak in the chilled drop box, and me cooking it to share with friends that evening.

Assuming I still have a job… and myself and my clients haven’t been replaced by AI; in the morning the AI will tell me what train to catch to make the meetings Windshift Capital’s business AI Agent has scheduled with my clients’ AI Agents. It will be coordinating with other AI agents on the route I take to make sure I buy a flat white as I pass the coffee stand, tell me there is book deal at Daunts (which I will pass on way to a meeting), and remind me I need a new hat, which I can get a discount on from Bates on my way to see my favourite property firm later in the day. Heaven forbid the FSA ever discovers my AI has been quietly feeding positive new stories on its own stock price to the top of my stock news feed.

While we’re at work, it will work out menus from what it knows is in the fridge, suggesting ingredients we don’t have but it will get paid the most from by persuading us to order.

The future of AI will as an effective and invisible tax on every transaction we make… which is just yet another redistribution of wealth from workers to the owners. It will also dominate public services, and with luck and a fine following sea, may actually make our lives better. But it’s hardly evolved society. We will think it makes our lives better and easier. But.. will it?

We will no doubt adapt to the new post AI crash world it as seamlessly as we did the internet and dot.com crash. Onwards and upwards! The firms that survive the coming AI puke will be making billions by monetising us in oh so many multiple ways.

Out of time, and back to the day job…

Bill Blain

CEO – Windshift Capital

Author – The Morning Porridge

Partner – Shard Capital

Special Advisor – Spitfire Strategic Capital