95% of Companies See 'Zero Return' on $30B Generative AI Spend

We are entering the “Trough of disillusionment.” These hype cycles are very predictable. GPT-5 being panned as a disappointment after endless hype may go down as GenAI’s “jump the shark” moment.

It’s all fun and games until the bean counters start asking for evidence of return on investment. GenAI folks better buckle up. Bumps ahead. The smart folks are already quietly preparing for a shift to ride the next hype wave up while others ride this train to the trough’s bottom.

Cue a bunch of increasingly desperate puff PR trying to show this stuff returns value.

I wouldn’t be surprised if 95% of companies knew this was a money pit but felt obligated to burn a pile of money on it so as not to hurt the stock price.

I also wouldn't be surprised if bean counters were expecting a return in an unreasonable amount of time.

"Hey, guys, listen, I know that this just completely torched decades of best practices in your field, but if you can't show me progress in a fiscal year, I have to turn it down." - some MBA somewhere, probably, trying and failing yet again to rub his two brain cells together for the first time since high school.

Just agentic coding is a huge change. Like a years-to-grasp change, and the very nature of the changes that need to be made keep changing.

Sam Altman and company have been promising full on AGI. THAT'S the price shock.

Agents may be good (I haven't seen it yet, maybe it's a skill issue but I'm not spending hundreds of dollars to find out and my company seems reluctant to spend thousands to find out) but they are definitely, definitely not general superintelligence like SamA has been promising

at all

really is sinking in

these might be useful tools, yes, but the market was sold science fiction. We have a useful supercharged autocomplete sold as goddamn positronic brains. The commentariat here perhaps understood that (definitely not everyone) but it's no surprise that there's a correction now that GPT-5 isn't literally smarter than 95% of the population when that's how it was being marketed