Independent market analysis
Companies fail at both ends of the scale: some bet the balance sheet on automation that isn’t ready, others sit still until the market reprices what they do. We track both failure patterns, measure how overheated the market is, and publish strategies that survive contact with reality.
No dunking, no doom. We analyze patterns, not people — and every case ends with what would have worked instead.
We do everything with AI now. — We’ve always managed without it.
Famous last words, either way.
The instrument
A composite of six indicators — from earnings-call rhetoric to automation reversals — normalized and weighted into one reading. Both ends of the scale are failure zones; the middle is the operating band.
The two failure patterns
Failure pattern · Overheated
Headcount cut before the workflow is proven. Forty pilots and no owner. An AI label on the pitch deck doing the work the product should do. Overheating is not enthusiasm — it is spending conviction faster than evidence accumulates.
Early symptoms
Failure pattern · Frozen
Refusal rarely looks like refusal — it looks like prudence. But while the hype cycle burns other people’s money, the frozen firm loses bids to competitors who quietly automated the boring parts. Standing still is also a bet.
Early symptoms
Case anatomy
Standing analysis
Six indicators, revised every quarter, tracked as one series. Not to predict the market — to notice when conviction and evidence drift apart.
Open the market monitor →What to do instead
Five tests that separate automation that compounds from automation that corrodes — plus a cooling-down sequence for the overheated and a starting sequence for the frozen.
Coverage
The same two scripts play out in Munich, London and Singapore — only the accents change. We review filings, court records and post-mortems across markets, because a pattern confirmed in one jurisdiction is a hypothesis everywhere else.
Bankrupt by AI is run by Balane GmbH. We help leadership teams separate good automation from bad, set kill criteria, and build an AI capability plan that doesn’t bet the company.
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