Every hype cycle has its masquerade of “disruptors” who turn out to be middlemen in shinier jackets. Remember the ICO boom — half the “companies” were just WordPress sites stapled to a coin? Or the dot-com days, where startups with no revenue model blew millions on Super Bowl ads?

Generative AI is running the same playbook. These aren’t companies building AI. They’re wrappers renting it. No proprietary models. No data. No real IP. Just thin interfaces slapped on top of OpenAI, Google, or Anthropic, and sold like it’s the cure for cancer.

It’s like leasing a Tesla and insisting you’re the next Henry Ford. Except the lease is expiring, the insurance is unaffordable, and the repo man is circling the block.

Exhibit A: Streamr.ai.

Magnite (Nasdaq: MGNI) put out a press release announcing they’d acquired this “AI platform” that supposedly makes CTV advertising easy for small businesses. Sounds impressive if you don’t look too closely.

But here’s the truth: Streamr.ai sold for almost nothing. There was no bustling team, no cutting-edge tech stack, no scaling user base. There were no employees.

This was a one-man band. Jonathan Moffie, the founder, landed himself a job. That’s the acquisition. Magnite got a headline, Moffie got a paycheck, and the rest was theater.

And then, just as I was drafting this article, another gem dropped: Rembrand announced a merger with Spaceback. On the surface? A strategic marriage of creative automation and product placement.

But peel back the PR gloss and you see the absurdity: both companies were owned by the same guy. This wasn’t some visionary consolidation. This was a founder merging his toys together and calling it news.

Not exactly press release worthy — but of course, they issued one anyway, because in today’s AI gold rush, perception is everything.

This is the reality of AI wrappers: they’re countdown timers, not companies.

Let’s not kid ourselves: Streamr.ai didn’t get bought because it was valuable. Rembrand didn’t merge because it was thriving. These were lifeboats disguised as strategy.

Magnite got a cheap AI headline. Rembrand got to pretend it had momentum. Investors got the short end. And the market got another dose of smoke and mirrors.

And here’s the kicker: this is just the beginning. The AI wrapper bubble is already popping, and what you’re seeing with Streamr.ai and Rembrand is the dress rehearsal for dozens more.

👉 Behind the paywall, I’ll break down:

Because when this wave crashes — and it will — the so-called exits won’t look like triumphs. They’ll look like yard sales at startups nobody remembers.

WANT MORE? Subscribe to ADOTAT+