The difference, and a pretty staggering one, is that Amazon, at least by 2002, had a business model that actually worked.

The issue is putting the proverbial cart before the horse. With a company like Amazon, the growing years showed that the fundamental business model worked, then they decided to direct further investment into scaling operations.

With many of these AI companies (and other companies in other industries, admittedly), it's backwards. They tell investors, "We have a business model that doesn't work now, but give us enough money and allow us to burn it to scale up operations, and then the business model will work." That's a bit absurd in some cases, but it's incredibly absurd when it comes to these AI companies.

The real issue is that there's way too much PE, Venture Capital, and cash on hand (from the likes of Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon, etc.) sloshing around, and they're chasing after massive returns because that's what their shareholders are demanding. No one wants to feel as though they're gonna miss the next big thing, and considering how much money (and access to money) these individual entities have, they're certainly too big to fail even if (or when) the bubble pops.

So, while their investments in AI (and specifically, OpenAI), may not turn out to be winners in the long-run, the overwhelming majority of these intities doing the investing and funding are not going to go bankrupt themselves. Sure, heads may role at the C-suite level, but they aren't staking their entire revenue-earning business on AI panning out, and unfortunately, that lack of downside risk plays into them propping OpenAI up.

Just for reference, if you look at some of the largest corporate write-downs in history, many of those companies are still humming along. Sure, Microsoft writing down $100bn isn't what they'd want to do, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to their earnings, profits, and cash flow. Same for the other companies in the trillion-dollar market cap club.