Their incentives are to juice their stock grants or other economic gains from pushing AI. If people aren't paying for it, it has limited value. In the case of Microsoft Copilot, only ~3% of the M365 user base is willing to pay for it. Whether enough value is derived for users to continue to pay for what they're paying for, and for enterprise valuation expectations to be met (which is mostly driven by exuberance at this point), remains to be seen.
Their goal is not to be right; their goal is to be wealthy. You do not need to be right to be wealthy, only well positioned and on time. Adam Neumann of WeWork is worth ~$2B following the same strategy, for example. Right place, right time, right exposure during that hype cycle.
Only 3.3% of Microsoft 365 users pay for Copilot - >>46871172 - February 2026
This is very much like the dot com bubble for those who were around to experience it.
https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1g78sgf/...
> In the late 90s and early 00s a business could get a lot of investors simply by being “on the internet” as a core business model.
> They weren’t actually good business that made money…..but they were using a new emergent technology
> Eventually it became apparent these business weren’t profitable or “good” and having a .com in your name or online store didn’t mean instant success. And the companies shut down and their stocks tanked
> Hype severely overtook reality; eventually hype died
("Show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome" -- Charlie Munger)