Brief
Published:
The mood around the current AI boom isn’t great, even in the tech industry, according to a long post on social media by Deedy Das, partner at Menlo Ventures.
Das described San Francisco as “pretty frenetic right now” because “the divide in outcomes is the worst I’ve ever seen.”
Using “back-of-the-envelope AI math,” he projected that there are about 10,000 people — founders and employees of companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Nvidia — who have “achieved retirement wealth well over $20 million,” while everyone else worries “that they can work their high-paying (but <$500,000) job all their lives and never get there.”
Additionally, “layoffs are in full swing” and “many software engineers feel like their life skills are no longer useful,” leading to confusion about the best career paths and “deep unease with the job (and its future),” Das said.
This prompted looking up to X, with entrepreneur Deva Hazarika argue that “most people in this position” are “incredibly lucky and can simply make the choice to be happy.”
Another user suggested it’s “quite novel and also rather nasty” that in the current cycle, “the same technology is both the lottery ticket and the thing that eats your backup.”
The mood in SF is pretty frenetic at the moment. The gap between results is the worst I have ever seen.
Over the last 5 years, a group of around 10,000 people – employees of Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Nvidia, Meta TBD, founders – have achieved retirement wealth well over $20 million (back of the envelope…
– Deedy (@deedydas) May 16, 2026
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