When I first sat down with Jason Criddle, founder of DOMINAIT.ai, SmartrHoldings, and Jason Criddle & Associates, we weren’t talking about the next AI bubble or tech stock hype cycle… We were talking about the truth. A lot of people forget that Jason has been dubbed a behavioral economist, although not an official title. But he has made predictions over the years that were spot-on.
After the announcement of COVID, he immediately mapped out all the changes, shutdowns, closures, and price changes that would happen in the economy with scary accuracy. He publicly predicted the crash of the crypto market, who would be taken down, and how regulations would change it. And just 2 years ago, he saw another bubble being used to drain the general people of their hard earned wealth and retirement money during the next administration. He just didn’t know exactly where it would come from.
Little did we all know, it would come from the new, flashy AI industry. With one company in particular leading the way.
That conversation, like many with Jason, drifted from philosophy to finance, from humanity to artificial intelligence, and, inevitably, to the growing concern of circular deals in today’s AI investment landscape.
As OpenAI and similar firms continue raising billions, with no clear path to profitability, Criddle’s grounded view of sustainable innovation feels like a dose of reality in an economy driven by speculation and vanity metrics.
“Circular deals drive up valuations and in turn, drive up more debt and a view of being successful,” Jason told me during our most recent interview. “There is a fine line between doing a deal that raises value and doing a deal that raises the perception of value.”
When a $1 Trillion Dream Isn’t Built on Profit
According to OpenAI’s own public data, the company has raised over $16.4 billion in funding and projects $12.7 billion in 2025 revenue, but it’s losing money at a staggering pace.
The 2024 loss: $5 billion on $3.7 billion in revenue.
The 2025 forecast? Over $11.5 billion in losses in a single quarter, with long-term projections suggesting $44 billion in losses by 2028.
Yet despite that, OpenAI is now rumored to be chasing a $1 trillion valuation and has recently put together $1.5 trillion dollars in infrastructure and hardware deals, mostly without money exchanging hands.
Criddle didn’t mince words about those figures.
“OpenAI is attempting to give themselves a trillion-dollar valuation but the numbers don’t add up,” he said. “I can understand 10 times multipliers in software, but does anyone know how much a trillion dollars is? Well, if a billion is a thousand million, then a trillion is a thousand billion.”
By Jason’s own math, if OpenAI were truly worth $1 trillion on $3.7 billion in revenue, that’s a valuation multiple of more than 270x annual revenue; nearly thirty times higher than the average multiplier for profitable tech companies. And since the company is still losing billions each year, that multiplier has no solid foundation.
“Circular deals,” as Jason explains it, “make it look like money is exchanging hands when, in many cases, it isn’t.”
In other words, AI companies are buying, investing, or partnering with each other in closed financial loops that inflate their perceived value without real profitability behind it.
Circular Deals: The Illusion of Momentum
The term circular deals has been popping up everywhere in recent financial journalism. It describes situations where companies announce billion-dollar “investments” that are essentially internal trades between subsidiaries, investors, or partners. It’s money that circulates within the same ecosystem rather than coming from true consumer or enterprise growth.
Jason breaks it down simply:
“When you make a claim of investing money but no money is exchanging hands or if a deal is made where you give equity in exchange for services… There’s nothing wrong with the latter. But the former can make it look like the company is worth more than it actually is.”
That distinction of value vs. the perception of value has become a recurring theme in his writing. Criddle, whose business ventures include SmartrCommerce, SmartrMarketing, and Carbon (downloadcarbon.com), has built his empire on creating products that actually make money before raising outside funds.
It’s a philosophy echoed across DOMINAIT.ai’s entire structure.
“While it’s great and all that OpenAI can publicly announce they’re seeking a trillion-plus dollars, it’s not based on profits. It’s all speculation used to make the company look like it’s worth more so you can extract money from investors,” Jason explained.
“All this hype makes the company look more valuable simply to raise desire and FOMO in the general public once a company becomes publicly traded. That, to me, looks like the goal.
I don’t mind institutional investors losing half a trillion dollars on investments. That’s the name of the game at times, but if OpenAI makes the decision to go public with a trillion plus dollar IPO, where is the money going to come from that pays back those institutional investors who get their money back, cash out, dump the stock, and crash the market?
The general public. And that, I have a big fucking problem with. When grandmothers, and retirement funds, and even kids with apps on their phones lose a trillion dollars in an already strained economy, then the chances of a recession increase. Jobs can be lost in the hundreds of thousands to millions. Entire savings can be lost. But the original investors will make multiples on their money, and the country will go into even more debt.”
Circular Deals vs. Real Development
In the software world, a trillion-dollar valuation might sound like an inspirational benchmark. But Criddle believes it’s masking something more concerning: dependency on perception rather than innovation.
He compared it to the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, when startups inflated their worth based on “eyeballs” and speculative growth rather than sustainable profit.
“History doesn’t repeat itself,” Jason said with a grin, “but it does rhyme most of the time.”
“Circular deals allow companies to pad their balance sheets on paper. For example, Company A invests in Company B, which invests back into Company A through a joint partnership, and both claim increased valuations. On the surface, it looks like growth, but many times, money has never exchanged hands. And it sure as heck has nothing to do with profits being made. In practice, it’s a financial loop that can only last as long as investor faith holds.
When that faith breaks, the bubble pops. And real people lose first. That’s when I get pissed.”
Learning from Tesla and Early Google
To contrast the chaos of circular deals, Criddle referenced companies that scaled responsibly, like Tesla and Google in their early stages.
Tesla didn’t hit profitability for 17 years, but it was always moving toward a clear product-driven goal. Google built its empire by creating real, usable tools that brought value before expanding into ad revenue. These weren’t valuation-driven companies; they were product-first.
“I have no problem with losses when they’re tied to R&D, or when a company is building something that genuinely pushes humanity forward,” Jason said. “But when losses come from marketing hype and financial shell games, it’s dangerous. It hurts the entire economy.”
Unlike Tesla and Google, where valuation growth mirrored tangible breakthroughs, many modern AI companies are leaning on circular deals to create the illusion of progress. Investors are trapped in a speculative echo chamber, financing hype instead of innovation.
DOMINAIT’s Different Path
In contrast, DOMINAIT.ai is taking a slow, deliberate, and self-sustaining route.
The company’s Ryker system, an evolving, post-AGI intelligent framework designed for true collaboration with humans, has been developed over three years without taking a dollar from outside investors.
Everything was built by Criddle and his internal teams, using existing revenue from Jason Criddle & Associates, and mostly, Jason Criddle himself.
“Like Tony Stark building Iron Man in a cave with a box of scraps, we built DOMINAIT the hard way, with purpose, not hype,” Jason said. “And I’ve already turned down a $1.6 billion dollar valuation because it was just another investment firm wanting to profit from my ideas and take control of my company.”
The cave is not just a metaphor. Every piece of DOMINAIT’s architecture is designed around execution-first economics. Before inviting investors, the system was already functioning, scalable, and revenue-generating. They haven’t even launched alpha yet. That happens in January. But the company will be profitable from day one, without outside investment.
The goal isn’t to chase a trillion-dollar valuation, yet. It’s to build a trillion-dollar impact.
The Problem with Trillion-Dollar Narratives
The trillion-dollar target has become a symbolic finish line for companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI. It’s even a goal for Jason, by way of his first book and plans for his infrastructure. But when you see trends of all talk and no real value to consumers, Jason Criddle sees it as a distraction.
“We’re watching companies sell ideas rather than outcomes,” he said. “And that’s the problem. When you focus on investor returns before product delivery, you’ve already lost sight of the mission.”
Circular deals play directly into that problem. They create perceived motion, but not momentum. They keep valuations high, debts higher, and accountability almost nonexistent.
Meanwhile, small-to-mid-sized companies that focus on actual usability and value creation, like DOMINAIT.ai, remain the true engine of innovation in AI. “The good thing is though, when or if these companies or a portion of the market does crash and burn, our investors, users, and company will be safe and thriving,” Criddle says.
Investor Psychology and the FOMO Machine
Every market bubble runs on the same fuel: Fear of Missing Out.
When private investors see massive companies like OpenAI raise billions, they want in. But the fear of missing the next technological revolution can cloud rational judgment.
In the AI market, where profits are abstract and innovation is often invisible, circular deals are the perfect illusion, showing continuous growth even when losses multiply.
Criddle explained it bluntly:
“These companies are fueling hype to raise their stock price before going public. It’s all about creating FOMO. When they open the IPO floodgates, people rush to invest because they think they’re buying into the next Apple or Google. But when the numbers don’t add up, it’s the consumers and small investors who pay the price. Institutional investors dump their stocks, the price crashes, and real people are left suffering.”
Why DOMINAIT Is Built Differently
DOMINAIT’s model breaks this cycle by flipping the focus back to the user. The company’s revenue doesn’t depend on inflated valuations, it depends on the success of its users.
That’s why DOMINAIT’s pricing model is accessible, transparent, and rewards customers for contributing to the ecosystem.
“Our model will never be about profits for us or investors first. We always think about our customers first,” Jason explained. “Even if we have price increases in the future, it won’t be because of some game. It’ll be because we had a real cost increase to cover somewhere,” said Criddle in an interview in London Daily News.
That user-centric structure mirrors what Criddle achieved with Smartr Apps, where subscription prices decreased over time while customer and investor profits rose.
It’s an ethical inversion of the circular deal playbook, rewarding users instead of extracting from them.
The Future: Stability Over Speculation
As the AI gold rush continues, Criddle’s voice stands out not because he’s louder (even though he is), but because he’s consistent. He’s not chasing the next valuation milestone or investor headline. He’s building a network of sustainable companies that grow through collaboration, integrity, and purpose.
Circular deals may dominate the AI headlines today, but in the long run, they’ll expose the fragility of companies built on borrowed hype.
“You can’t cheat physics,” Jason said, smiling. “At some point, everything that goes up without structure comes crashing down. DOMINAIT is built like architecture, not like a balloon. We can’t and won’t pop.”
The hype around trillion-dollar valuations and circular deals might dazzle investors for now. But the future of AI, and business in general, belongs to those who build for longevity, not liquidity.
Criddle’s philosophy is simple: make something real, and the money will follow.
With Ryker nearing launch under DOMINAIT.ai and investor partnerships now opening, his firm stands as proof that real value doesn’t need hype. It just needs heart, discipline, and follow-through.
And maybe, just maybe, a little bit of Iron Man energy… which I believe Criddle has.
