“Otherwise, when you remove the contracts signed by hyperscalers and OpenAI (which I do not believe has paid anybody other than Microsoft yet), based on my analysis, there was less than a billion dollars of AI compute revenue in 2025, or 0.5831% of the money spent on data centers.”
Our reading, the sentence that was checked:
Excluding hyperscaler and OpenAI contracts, AI compute revenue in 2025 was under $1 billion.
Assessment: Unresolved Evidence as of
Where and when Ed Zitron wrote it
Where's Your Ed At, The Enshittifinancial Crisis, paragraph 255.
- Said
- Source observed
- live page, full text, public
- Evidence as of
- the cutoff for this assessment
- Assessment recorded
- assessment wyea-the-enshittifinancial-crisis-7eaa6a-a1
We recorded 26 claims from this post. See every claim from this post.
The wording above is the version this site observed on 2026-10-28. The source may have been edited after 2025-12-29. This page does not claim the wording was captured then.
What the claim commits to
- Kind
- Observation
- Deadline, as the speaker wrote it
- None stated. This site does not add one.
- Deadline state when assessed
- No horizon
- Deadline state on 2026-10-29
- No horizon (the release’s reference date)
Conditions
- excluding hyperscaler and OpenAI contracts (qualifier, stated by the speaker)
From the speaker
- remove the contracts signed by hyperscalers and OpenAI
- based on my analysis
- less than a billion dollars of AI compute revenue in 2025
- 0.5831% of the money spent on data centers
Our interpretation
- The assessed threshold is realized AI-compute rental revenue below USD 1 billion during calendar 2025.
- I read the exclusion as removing transactions in which hyperscalers or OpenAI purchase compute, rather than removing every sale by a supplier that also serves those customers.
- Hyperscalers includes large-scale operators such as Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Oracle; borderline classifications must be disclosed and tested for sensitivity.
- The customer exclusion is a market-definition rule, not a conditional forecast.
- The full calendar year follows the explicit wording in 2025, although the post appeared two days before year-end.
- The accompanying percentage requires a separately defined data-center-spending denominator. It cannot be verified from the revenue threshold alone.
Counts as supported if: A sufficiently complete, consistently defined estimate places eligible realized 2025 AI-compute rental revenue below USD 1 billion. Verification of the accompanying percentage additionally requires a matching spending denominator.
Counts as contradicted if: A same-scope market estimate, or a documented non-overlapping lower bound, establishes eligible realized 2025 revenue of at least USD 1 billion.
Retrospective: these criteria were written after the outcome was public.
Current assessment
Was it true for the period described?
Outcome: Unresolved
The record was checked, and the evidence available by the cutoff does not settle it.
Scored on a plain reading. The speaker named no measure for this claim, so it was judged on the reading an informed reader would take, stated below under our interpretation. Both reviews had to find that reading fair.
- Evidence as of
- Deadline state when assessed
- No horizon
- Assessment recorded
- Policy version
- 2026-10-28.7
Rationale
The available supplier disclosures do not reproduce Zitron's market total. CoreWeave's total revenue cannot be treated as eligible revenue without the customer and service exclusions. Lambda's cited estimate is annualized and cannot be added as realized 2025 revenue. Neither a complete total below $1 billion nor a reliable eligible lower bound of at least $1 billion was established. The accompanying percentage also lacks a defined denominator.
Limitations
- The market includes private suppliers with limited financial disclosure.
- Supplier totals and customer exclusions require reconciliation.
- Alternative definitions of hyperscaler and AI-compute services could change the aggregate.
Evidence (2 items)
Context only: CoreWeave, Inc.,
a limited number of customers.
Why it matters here: The filing reports $5.131 billion of total 2025 revenue and approximately 67% from Microsoft. Those figures do not isolate eligible AI-compute revenue after removing OpenAI, other hyperscalers and any nonqualifying services.
- Publisher
- CoreWeave, Inc.
- Kind of source
- Regulatory filing, audited
- Measures
- CoreWeave, Total consolidated revenue and customer concentration, USD millions, gaap, 2025-01-01 to 2025-12-31
- Describes events of
- Public from
Context only: Sacra,
annualized revenue
Why it matters here: This is an annualized year-end estimate, not realized calendar-year rental revenue. It also does not remove hyperscaler and OpenAI purchases, so it cannot be added to a qualifying market total.
- Where
- Opening summary
- Publisher
- Sacra
- Kind of source
- Secondary summary
- Measures
- Lambda, Annualized revenue, USD millions per year, estimate, 2025-12-31 to 2025-12-31
- Describes events of
- Public from
What would settle it
A reconciled 2025 supplier-by-customer revenue dataset, or a documented eligible lower bound of at least $1 billion, using consistent revenue recognition and exclusions. The percentage also requires its spending denominator.
Where it was said (1)
Said once in the sources this register covers.
: Where's Your Ed At, The Enshittifinancial Crisis
Otherwise, when you remove the contracts signed by hyperscalers and OpenAI (which I do not believe has paid anybody other than Microsoft yet), based on my analysis, there was less than a billion dollars of AI compute revenue in 2025, or 0.5831% of the money spent on data centers.
- Where
- paragraph 255
- Published
- 2025-12-29
- Source observed
- , live page
- Access
- full text, public
History
Assessment versions
- Assessment wyea-the-enshittifinancial-crisis-7eaa6a-a1: Current. Outcome: Unresolved. Evidence as of 2026-10-28. Public date not recorded.
Recorded events
Assessment publishedBy this site
First assessment published after both reviews and the final-text check passed.
About assessment wyea-the-enshittifinancial-crisis-7eaa6a-a1.