{"id":155047,"date":"2025-11-23T07:37:36","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T07:37:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/155047\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T07:37:36","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T07:37:36","slug":"googles-gains-and-metas-woes-show-a-more-cautious-ai-market-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/155047\/","title":{"rendered":"Google\u2019s gains and Meta\u2019s woes show a more cautious AI market \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Some <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/artificial-intelligence\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/artificial-intelligence\/\">AI<\/a>-related stocks have been pummelled lately, while others are doing just fine. For all the talk of an AI crash, market behaviour suggests something more nuanced, pointing less to a bursting bubble than to a selective sorting of high-risk and lower-risk names.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Take <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/oracle\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/oracle\/\">Oracle<\/a>. In September, shares went skyward on AI enthusiasm, briefly making founder Larry Ellison the richest man in the world, before then giving up all their gains as investors examined the financial plumbing beneath the story.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Facebook parent Meta, too, has been bloodied, losing a quarter of its value since peaking in August. The company is pouring billions into AI talent and infrastructure, yet no clear product or monetisation path has emerged, leaving investors \u2013 who have not forgotten Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s ill-fated bet on the so-called metaverse \u2013 decidedly wary.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">In contrast, Google parent Alphabet, has done just fine recently and is up more than 50 per cent in 2025. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Generating abundant free cash flow and with a credible route to monetising AI, it has even tempted Warren Buffett\u2019s Berkshire Hathaway \u2013 hardly a known bubble-chaser \u2013 into taking a $4.9 billion (\u20ac4.24 billion) stake in the company (disclosure: I own shares in Berkshire).<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Credit markets, too, show the distinction: the cost of insuring Oracle\u2019s debt has roughly doubled since September, notes FT columnist Robert Armstrong, while Alphabet\u2019s remains largely unchanged.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It all suggests markets are increasingly wary of big AI promises unsupported by cash flow. Instead, investors are distinguishing sharply between two types of companies \u2013 those with strong balance sheets, positive free cash flow and credible paths to monetising AI, and those that are debt-funding vast infrastructure without clear profitability.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">In other words, there isn\u2019t an indiscriminate, frothy AI bubble where everything with an AI label floats. Recent moves suggest a selective recalibration rather than a panic, reinforcing that not all AI bets are created equal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some AI-related stocks have been pummelled lately, while others are doing just fine. For all the talk of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,9712,218,219,823,1711,61,60,11104,1226,12498,80,2354],"class_list":{"0":"post-155047","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-alphabet","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-facebook","13":"tag-google","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-larry-ellison","17":"tag-meta","18":"tag-oracle","19":"tag-technology","20":"tag-warren-buffett"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}