Jersey Mike’s IPO illustrates how bad the AI hype has become

I cannot determine the exact turning point: from realistic excitement about a new technology to hype aww-come on – but I’m pretty sure that when a sandwich shop with Danny DeVito as its public face talks about AI in its IPO filings, we should be getting close.

It’s the same with Jersey Mike’s.

As investors today crave all things AI, I understand why tech companies feel the need to sprinkle AI dust on their fields. This applies as much to non-AI startups raising venture capital as it does to the public debut of Bending Spoons, a company in the business of buying outdated, “non-AI” technology companies to rehabilitate.

Just for fun, I looked at Jersey Mike’s IPO documents to see how far this coercion can go. Surely a sandwich shop wouldn’t feel the need to mention AI in its products S-1. But look!

The term artificial intelligence and the acronym ‘AI’ were mentioned 22 times. In this case, the company cannot claim that it sells AI software. It sells submarine sandwiches. AI products are what investors really want (terrible pun intended).

Yet it has found a way to mention AI in its risk warnings for investors. That might be even funnier. There is no explanation of what it is using AI for, which could be dangerous for investors, other than a hand gesture with the phrase: “We are starting to use AI technologies in our business.”

Frankly, the business that operates franchisees relies on software (mentioned 52 times) and data (mentioned 112 times), as all businesses do. The AI ​​risk warning was boilerplate and perhaps even necessary, as similar disasters have already befallen other food companies the half-baked AI inventory tool that Starbucks rolled out, which failed to count and was recently demolished.

Still, I’ll go a step further here and predict that the risk of an AI disaster for a company that produces real sandwiches, not AI slop, is about the same as, say, a franchise store being struck by lightning. That actually happened anyway to a store in Texas in 2021. Yet the weather was only mentioned five times in the S-1. And lightning? Not once.