Nobody who signs a five-year enterprise AI agreement can tell you what year four costs. Dale Leszczynski and Nick McIntosh spend this episode on the question underneath the AI bubble talk: why the tools universities now run on are priced by someone else's fundraising round, and what happens when that round runs out. Along the way: Gary Marcus's distinction between a financial bubble and a tech bubble, the June export-control shutdown of Anthropic's Fable 5 and Mythos 5, the rise of Chinese open-weight models, and what the Blackboard–Moodlerooms–Anthology saga already taught the sector about vendor capture — if anyone wrote it down.

[00:00] — Nobody can price year four
[00:46] — Financial bubble versus tech bubble
[03:39] — Ninety seconds on the money
[04:47] — Capital cycle or pedagogical one?
[08:30] — The ten-times-the-price test
[09:57] — Three fragilities in every contract
[10:53] — The June model shutdown
[17:10] — Chinese models and both locks
[20:25] — The LMS precedent replayed
[23:04] — Price the exit before signing

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