# AI Implementation Realities, Investor Hype, and Operational Costs

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-07-04

## Transcript

This is TechCrunch.
What?
A warning sign about AI's real cost.
Courtesy of Google and Amazon.
I'm Imran Shaikh and your Weekend Crunch featuring three Big Tech Headlines starts right now.
If meta can be seen as an example, replacing people with AI doesn't seem to be that easy to do.
You see, Reuters reports that at an internal town hall on Thursday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told staff that the pace of AI agent development had not accelerated in the way executives had previously expected them to.
Earlier this year, Meta laid off some 8,000 employees, approximately 10% of its corporate workforce, and reassigned another 7,000 to various AI groups, including one called Agent Transformation, Bloomberg reported.
During this week's meeting, Zuckerberg apparently commented on these job cuts, noting that they were not as clean as they should have been.
Now, the cuts were made because top officials at the company were worried that we weren't going to move fast enough to adapt to the changing landscape of the tech industry, Zuck reportedly added.
The corporate leader also apparently said that the perceived upside of the new AI-focused company structure hadn't come to fruition yet, although he said that he believed the company would begin to see improvements from its AI investments during the next three to six months.
Of course, several other investigative reports have depicted Meta's month-sold AI unit as a soul-crushing gulag, according to some of the engineers assigned to it.
Meta has invested heavily in AI and is expected to spend as much as $145 billion on AI infrastructure this year, Reuters reports.
TechCrunch reached out to Meta for comment.
Now, we can't tell the exact tipping point from realistic excitement over a new technology to hype to, aw, come on.
But I'm pretty sure when a sandwich shop with Danny DeVito as its public face talks about AI in its IPO documents, we gotta be getting close.
So it is with Jersey Mike's.
Because of investor thirst for all things AI these days, I understand why tech companies feel the need to sprinkle AI dust all over their pitches.
This is as true for non-AI startups raising venture capital as it is for Bending Spoon's public debut, a company in the business of buying aging, not AI tech companies to rehabilitate.
So just for kicks, we at TechCrunch took a look at Jersey Mike's IPO documents to see how far this compulsion may go.
I mean, surely a sandwich shop would have no need to mention AI in its S1.
But lo and behold, the term artificial intelligence and its acronym AI were mentioned 22 times.
In this case, the company can't claim to be selling AI software.
It sells submarine sandwiches, for crying out loud.
However, AI products are what investors are really hungering for.
A terrible pun intended.
Still, it found a way to mention AI in its investor risk warnings.
Now that may be even more funny.
It doesn't explain what it's using AI for that could be dangerous to investors beyond a hand wave of a phrase, we are beginning to use AI technologies in our business.
Now in all fairness, as a company that operates franchises, it does rely on software, mentioned 52 times, and data, 112 mentions there, as all businesses do.
Its AI risk warning was boilerplate copy, perhaps even necessary, as such disasters have already happened to other food businesses, like the half-baked AI inventory tool that Starbucks rolled out, which couldn't count and was scrapped into what I can only presume was a no-liquids trash bin.
It's no secret that AI is a hog, consuming energy and water like no digital tech before it.
Now we know just how much big tech's pursuit of AI is costing the environment.
You see, both Google and Amazon released their sustainability reports this week.
And the numbers, they ain't pretty.
Each company has pledged to zero out its carbon emissions in the coming years, but AI has made those goals a lot harder to hit.
You see, Google's total carbon emissions are up 25% since last year.
Amazon's are up 16%.
A close reading of the report suggests that both Amazon and Google will have to make some serious and potentially costly adjustments to their businesses if they're going to achieve their net zero targets.
Now, neither company comes out and blames AI directly for the rising emissions, but there's plenty of indirect evidence.
Both Amazon and Google acknowledge their energy use has increased significantly in the last year as use of AI has risen.
Both talk about carbon intensity, essentially how much pollution a company generates for every dollar of revenue it brings in.
a metric China has used over the last several years when negotiating climate treaties, even as its emissions were skyrocketing.
And both devote several pages touting how AI can benefit the environment, a case of protesting too much, to borrow some Shakespeare here.
Now the picture gets clearer the deeper you dig into the data.
Both companies are actually doing okay when it comes to carbon pollution from energy purchases.
Years of buying renewable power have helped keep a lid on things, though that may change in the near future as tech companies, including Google, have begun to invest heavily in natural gas power plants to keep pace with AI's power demands.
Amazon, Google, and their peers have their work cut out for them.
To deliver on their net zero pledges, They'll need to ramp up their renewable energy purchases, invest heavily in advanced steel and cement manufacturing, and buy many millions of tons of carbon removal credits.
It's still possible, but their embrace of AI has not made it any easier.
And folks, that's your Daily Crunch.
Today's stories were reported by Lucas Ropec, Julie Bort, Tim Deschamps, and more awesome TechCrunch journalists.
We'll see you here on Tuesday.
And until then, find us at TechCrunch.com.