We’re Arguing About Tires While the Engine Is Being Invented
A Purpl.co perspective on long-term thinking in the AI era
Every AI cycle looks the same:
A hype spike → a panic → everyone suddenly pretending to be a semiconductor accountant.
Today’s debate is:
“Server depreciation!”
“Capex explosions!”
“Overleveraging!”
“AI winter incoming!”
It’s noise.
Because while everyone is fighting about the dashboard, the car is quietly turning into a rocket.
This isn’t a story about quarterly margins.
It’s a story about humanity inventing intelligence — and what that means for the next 20–30 years.
The Mini-Cycle vs The Mega-Shift
Yes, there’s always periods of profit taking and corrections.
Companies stretched, hired too fast, promised AGI by Tuesday.
Now the system is normalizing.
But the bigger arc?
Models are compounding
Cost curves are falling
Intelligence is becoming ambient
AI is shifting from a “tool” to the underlying fabric of productivity
We’re not in the AI revolution.
We’re in the prequel to the AI revolution.
And that’s exactly where retail investors have their edge.
The Mike Burry Argument — Valid Concern, Wrong Scale
Mike Burry has recently talked about how AI companies might be depreciating servers over 5 years when maybe the useful life is 3.
He might be right.
But here’s the real point:
Even if true, it doesn’t change the destination.
It matters for this quarter’s P&L.
It matters if you’re a hedge fund trying to guess next month’s sentiment.
But if you’re a long-term builder or investor?
It’s academically interesting — and strategically irrelevant.
Here’s why:
Every major tech wave misprices hardware early.
It happened with mainframes, servers, telecom, early cloud.
Didn’t stop anything.
The cost curve overwhelms the depreciation curve.
AI capability and efficiency are compounding faster than equipment ages.
The mismatch gets swallowed.
Capex today is buying the infrastructure of the next century.
Not the next quarter.
This is an arms race for future cognitive infrastructure dominance.
The efficiency wave coming will dwarf the input-cost debate.
When intelligence itself becomes cheap, everything else gets cheaper.
Depreciation cycles become background static.
Burry is pointing at the speed bumps.
The road still heads to the same destination.
Overleverage Panic — A Classic Tech Ritual
People say AI companies “overleveraged.”
Built too much.
Spent too fast.
Overpromised revenue timelines.
This always happens.
Railroads were overbuilt.
Electrification was overbuilt.
Dot-com infrastructure was insane.
Mobile networks were massively overdeployed early on.
Yet those technologies still rewired the world.
Overleverage doesn’t kill a paradigm shift.
It accelerates it by forcing:
efficiency breakthroughs
industry consolidation
rapid maturation
It’s evolution, disguised as corporate drama.
Where Retail Investors Actually Win
This is where Purpl.co comes in — because retail investors don’t have to trade the noise.
They don’t have to time mini-cycles.
They don’t care if a CFO adjusts a depreciation schedule by 24 months.
Your edge is simple:
You can look further out than anyone else.
Institutions are forced to play the quarterly game.
Retail is not.
By thinking long-term, you can position around the mega-shift rather than the micro-cycle:
Intelligence gets cheaper
Productivity explodes
One-person companies outperform today’s teams
Entire industries refactor around software-like margins
Global economic output lifts
This is the biggest compounding force of our lifetime.
And retail investors who stay focused — instead of getting whiplashed by narratives — capture the upside that institutions keep fumbling.
This is exactly why Purpl.co exists:
to help people see beyond the noise, understand the curve, and build patiently for the next few decades instead of reacting to every headline.
The Only Thing That Really Matters
We’re at the very beginning of a cognitive revolution.
A world where reasoning becomes an API, intelligence becomes infrastructure, and productivity becomes exponential by default.
In that world:
depreciation debates don’t matter
panic cycles don’t matter
overleverage dramas don’t matter
Because once intelligence becomes cheap, everything else aligns.
We’re arguing about tire wear while the engine is being invented.
And if you’re thinking long-term — you already know which part of the car matters.
