--- title: "A Leading Indicator Has Emerged Suggesting That the AI Industry Is Cooked" description: "Mark Zuckerberg is throwing billions of dollars at building his own super-powered AI — and we all know how well his last venture went." date: "2025-07-03" modified: "2025-07-03" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/indicator-ai-industry-cooked" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" tags: - "ai industry" - "mark zuckerberg" - "Meta" - "metaverse" --- # A Leading Indicator Has Emerged Suggesting That the AI Industry Is Cooked ![Mark Zuckerberg is throwing billions of dollars at building his own super-powered AI — and we all know how well his last venture went.]() *\Image: Getty / Futurism\* In the world of cultural commentary, there are plenty of benchmarks used to determine when a [trend is on its deathbed](). From the classic shark-jumping episode of "[Happy Days]()" to the adoption of Facebook by [grandparents the world around](), those with their ears to the ground can spot when a craze is on its way out. In that vein, the news that Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to [build supercharged AI]() sure strikes us as bad news for that industry. Let's take it back a few years to the fall of 2021. As America reopened its restaurants and bars to a populace cooped up for a year during the COVID-19 lockdowns, the [longtime virtual reality enthusiast]() experienced a [paradigm shift]() of his own — one in which being immersed in digital worlds became so compelling an idea, he decided to sink billions upon billions of dollars into making it epic. Thusly, the CEO and founder of Facebook announced just before the Halloween of 2021 that he was [changing the company's name to Meta](), so better to associate his multi-platform conglomerate with the new metaverse he was trying to create. The rest, as they say, is history. After spending a whopping [$45 billion dollars]() on the world's most expensive fool's errand and making himself look [very, very goofy]() in the process, little remains of Zuck's outrageously failed bet on the small-m metaverse save for the company's name. By the [start of 2024](), he'd identified a different hobby on which to [spend billions of dollars](): artificial intelligence, which at that time was still new and shiny thanks to OpenAI's release of ChatGPT just a bit prior. With his metaverse dreams in the rear-view, the early-40s tech founder delivered the death knell to his expensive VR gambit by [firing many of the staffers]() at Meta's Reality Labs division, Zuckerberg completed his transition from the company's nerdy "[metamate-in-chief]()" to the [designer t-shirt edgelord]() bent on beating OpenAI at its own game. Most recently, we learned that Zuckerberg is not only launching a "[superintelligence]()" lab and [picking off OpenAI talent like flies](), but also reportedly paying the people he's poaching up to $100 million a head as a signing bonus — and that's just in the first year, [according to insiders who spoke to *Wired*](). With at least eight [OpenAI staffers jumping ship]() for Meta's greener pastures, that would bring the total spent on signing bonuses for superintelligence lab researchers alone at $800 million — and that's not counting the untold sums Zuckerberg has already [spent on AI chips](), or the [$65 billion he plans to throw]() at building out AI infrastructure in the near future. As [Meta and many other companies]() have found over the past few years, trying to play catch-up with OpenAI is a lot like the average person trying to win a footrace against Usain Bolt: not only are you going to lose spectacularly, but you're going to embarrass yourself while doing so. As with any new technology, there are early adopters and those who arrive late to the party. Zuckerberg clearly falls squarely in the latter category — and his delayed entry into the AI game, paired with his ability to direct ungodly sums towards his whims, make us wonder if the party may soon be over. **More on AI's death rattle:** [*Super Bowl Ads Predicted the Dot Com and Crypto Bubbles. This Year's Will Be Filled With Ads for AI Companies*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()