Tech turmoil

After two decades of explosive growth, the giants of the tech industry have entered a new phase.

In the past two months, the industry has laid off more than 150,000 workers, started renting out its office space and even selling property.

Mark Zuckerberg has baptized 2023 as "the year of efficiency".

Market gurus now defend the need to lose excess fat accumulated in the boom years.

The big American media herald the end of the golden age and the advent of a decade of austerity.

History shows that tech monopolies are not invincible, but the data is still confusing.

Are we facing an existential crisis in the sector or a paradigm shift towards a deeper consolidation?

There are economic reasons to justify a crisis.

Added to the general slowdown in the world economy and the threat of recession are the uncertainty caused by the war in Ukraine, geopolitical instability and rising interest rates.

The tech industry has been hit hard by the supply crunch, volatile relations with China and the end of cheap money.

The investment market has undergone a readjustment, in which the GAFA (acronym for Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple) have collectively lost almost five trillion dollars (4.63 trillion euros) in their market value.

There is also the pandemic bubble: what goes up has to come down.

The confinement regime promoted an accelerated, unexpected and exhaustive digitization of all aspects of society, including education, consumption, informal relationships or health.

The companies with the appropriate infrastructure to facilitate it were the only beneficiaries of this expansion.

The cloud grew 41.4%: Amazon and Meta doubled their workforce in less than two years.

It was a process that post-pandemic normality had to reverse.

On the other hand, they have begun to receive severe sanctions from the European Union for monopolistic abuses and violations in the processing of personal data, starting with the fine of 746 million euros against Amazon in 2021. Finally, an industry that consumes a total of 70.

Still, it's hard to argue that Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon are bankrupt when they report global earnings of $243 billion.

Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, has said that Artificial Intelligence is the most transformative technology of our time and that the layoffs are part of a strategy to direct talent and capital toward the company's highest priorities.

Microsoft has laid off 10,000 people but has invested $10 billion in OpenAI.

The owners of ChatGPT burn more than three million dollars a month on Azure servers.

And TSMC, the world's leading supplier of integrated circuits, grew 26.7% in the last four months of the year.

The new crossroads in which the technology industry finds itself invites us to think that something is running out.

But it might not just be where you are now, but an era that has spanned 20 years and has been characterized by the data hoarding of platform capitalism and compulsive, exhibitionist interaction on social media.