The CEO took a chance to ride the AI wave. He had the vision but not the skill. He knew it was a bubble, but he still wanted to play the game. He fooled a major oil service company—its biggest investor—into spending $100 million per year, which made the IPO look good. The oil company has since unloaded the shares claim it recovered the investment, and the 500millin contract will expire this year.
To make up the difference, in 2024 the company took another gamble: it created dozens of generative AI models and let hundreds of companies try them for a year. Apparently, they offered no real value, which caused revenue to fall short.
The CEO has a big mouth—he mentioned “generative AI” 39 times in a 2024 conference call, far more than any other tech company CEO, including those at NVDA, MSFT, and META—according to my review of the transcript using ChatGPT. When asked why he sold large amounts of his company’s stock, he claimed it was for “diversification.”
The head of the oil company’s IT department—likely the person who decided to invest in C3.AI—said at his final all-hands meeting, “You can't blame the CEO for taking a chance.”
Dump it.
