This is The Takeaway from today's Morning Brief, which you can sign up to receive in your inbox every morning along with:
I talk to a ton of people each week in my role.
Truthfully, the volume has gotten so large that by Friday, I usually 1) have forgotten my own name, 2) start talking like the people I've talked to, and 3) drive right by my own house on the way back from work.
Not complaining at all, just keeping it real.
The positive to the litany of conversations is that there's often one “comment of the week” that leaves an impression. This week, the comment belongs to C3.ai (AI) founder and executive chair Tom Siebel.
Siebel is an OG in tech. I always enjoy chatting with him — he's blunt and knows his stuff. Makes for great insights (and great interviews).
His company's stock got slammed on Thursday morning after reporting a rough quarter and yanking its full-year outlook. Siebel stepped up to the mic on my Opening Bid morning show — alongside his new CEO, Stephen Ehikian — and dropped this golden nugget:
“In this market out there, where you have companies trading at 100 times revenue, you have companies trading at half-trillion-dollar valuations that lose $10 billion a year, I mean, a lot of these valuations are crazy. Come on, C3.ai is a bargain stock,” Siebel said.
I have no clue if C3.ai is a screaming buy after a 55% year-to-date tanking — I hung up my analyst game 10-plus years ago. I do think C3.ai needs to restore investor trust, and that will take the rest of 2025 to sort out. Ehikian, fresh out of working for the Trump administration, has a lot of work to do in a short period of time.
But Siebel's valuation comment is of interest in light of the pressure we are seeing in AI stocks. It all began late last week with Nvidia (NVDA), as investors reassessed the company's quarter and outlook. Shares are down 6% in the past five trading sessions.
The AI selling has persisted this week.
Salesforce (CRM) and Figma (FIG) got drilled on Thursday after their quarterly numbers didn't wow. It's clear the hype on their earnings calls wasn't enough to paper over soft areas of the earnings reports. Growing concern on the Street centers around the pace of AI demand by corporations, given what looks to be a slowing US economy.
The overarching concern is whether valuations have plateaued for a sizable chunk of AI stocks. I fancy they might have, given the sharp negative reactions.
