Richard Campbell

Things Richard Says on Podcasts

Microsoft Regional Director and MVP for ASP.NET development, working on the .NET platform since its early days. Founded Humanitarian Toolbox in 2012, a nonprofit that has developers build open source software for disaster relief groups including the Red Cross and the CDC, and co-founded the DevIntersection conference. Co-hosts .NET Rocks! alongside Carl Franklin since 2005, and hosts Windows Weekly. Regularly appears across the TWiT network of shows including Security Now and This Week in Tech.

Where to Find Them

Richard Campbell hosts and writes .NET Rocks! , hosts Windows Weekly (Audio) , hosts All TWiT.tv Shows (Audio) , hosts Windows Weekly (Video) , hosts All TWiT.tv Shows (Video) , hosts Security Now , hosts Security Now (Audio) and hosts Security Now (Video) . They have also been a guest on This Week in Tech (3 times) and This Week in Tech (Video) (2 times) .

Recently: “The Future We Were Promised Geek Out” on .NET Rocks! (November 2026); “WW 1008: The Thurrottification of Tech - Microsoft FY27 Q1 Results & XBOX COO Mystery” on Windows Weekly (Video) (November 2026); “WW 1008: The Thurrottification of Tech - Microsoft FY27 Q1 Results & XBOX COO Mystery” on Windows Weekly (Audio) (November 2026); “Windows Weekly 1008: The Thurrottification of Tech” on All TWiT.tv Shows (Video) (November 2026); “Windows Weekly 1008: The Thurrottification of Tech” on All TWiT.tv Shows (Audio) (November 2026); “Building System Tray Windows Apps with Joe Finney” on .NET Rocks! (October 2026).

What They Said

“The bigger challenge you've got are these OpenAIs that are maybe bringing in 50 billion a quarter, but they're spending 100. And they're raising their rates to try and get those numbers to make sense, and it's driving customers over to the free models. The debate we've always had is: are they Netscape or are they Google? Both existed during the dot-com boom. At this point, with these numbers, they are all Netscape. The companies that are going to survive are the hyperscalers.” — Richard Campbell, .NET Rocks!

After his co-host argued cheap open models could crash AI prices, Campbell compares today's AI labs to the dot-com era. His revenue and spending figures are rough, unsourced estimates offered as such.

.NET Rocks! · 2026-11-05 Permalink → Listen →
.NET Rocks! Around 1:09:36 into the episode
Richard Campbell

And they're good enough. Quinn

Carl Franklin

…a race to the bottom, all these big companies that are currently propping up the world economy are going to tank. Right. And so they're in that, that's a big problem for the economy. Now, for people who want to take advantage of AI at a lower price, it's good because the prices are going to fall.

Richard Campbell

The bigger challenge you've got are these open AIs that are, you know, maybe bringing in 50 billion a quarter, but they're spending 100. Yeah. And so, and they're raising their rates to try and get those numbers to make sense. And it's driving customers over to the free models. And so you get into a situation where, you know, the debate we've always had is: are they Netscape or are they Google? Both existed during the dot-com boom. Netscape have vanished, having created the dot-com boom. And Google went on to be relevant. And at this point, with these numbers, they are all Netscape. The companies that are going to survive are the hyperscalers, the ones building out the data centers, Microsoft, Google, Amazon. They appear to be fine.

Carl Franklin

But the cost of new data centers, or the building of new data centers, is practically going to be non-existent. It'll probably stall. It's the ones that are, yeah, the ones that are existing and owned.

Richard Campbell

Well, and I've done this talk where I said what we're really seeing by those big three is the same thing that the telcos did in 2000. Buy up all of the locations where you can put cell towers so there will never be a cell tower competitor again.

Carl Franklin

Yeah.

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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