By Jason Criddle, Founder – DOMINAIT.ai | SmartrHoldings | Jason Criddle & Associates
Building Real Value
I got a call late last night from a publisher who wanted to talk about circular deals for an upcoming Forbes article. It was one of those conversations that starts casual but quickly dives into what’s really going on behind the headlines. Not the bullshit, but the economics behind what is really happening in our world. People tend to see what the news tells them rather than what’s really happening.
Most people follow that narrative. I create my own. And just as unfortunately as fortunately, I’m usually right.
The topic? How the AI industry has become the latest stage for financial theatrics; trillion-dollar valuations, multibillion-dollar losses, and a dangerous pattern of what the media has begun to call circular deals. Deals that make companies look valued higher than they are.
And while many companies are chasing paper value, DOMINAIT.ai and Carbon (downloadcarbon.com) have chosen a very different path… one based on sustainable growth, human collaboration, and real-world results.
Because I know, in the real world, hype doesn’t pay the bills. Value does. Silicon Valley has VC forms at their side with unlimited spending that goes into marketing and advertising. Real entrepreneurs, not so much. TV glamorizes presenting to investors. But the only thing harder than finding investors in big kid land, is talking them into writing a check. For that, you need real value.
The Rise of Circular Deals
The term circular deals has been all over the business press lately, from The New York Times’s exposé on OpenAI’s “complex and circular partnerships” to financial analysts on Hacker News warning about “closed loops of valuation inflation.”
In short, circular deals occur when companies invest in, partner with, or “sell” to each other in a way that doesn’t actually involve the exchange of real capital… nor do they add profits, revenue, or tangible value to a company. It looks like money is moving, but in reality, it’s just circling the same boardroom.
That’s how a company can project $12.7 billion in revenue for 2025 and still be projected to lose $44 billion by 2028 — and yet somehow claim to be worth $1.5 trillion.
When I was asked what I thought about all of it, my answer was simple:
“Circular deals drive up valuations and in turn, drive up more debt and a view of being successful,” I said. “There is a fine line between doing a deal that raises value and doing a deal that raises the perception of value.”
Image courtesy of CNBC
The Illusion of Infinite Growth
According to publicly available financial data, OpenAI has raised $16.4 billion in funding. In 2024 alone, it lost $5 billion on $3.7 billion in revenue.
Its investors are projecting $12.7 billion in 2025, but with potential quarterly losses of $11.5 billion.
And yet, it’s now chasing a $1.5 trillion valuation, largely supported by infrastructure and hardware partnerships that don’t even involve cash changing hands. And they sure as hell don’t have anything to do with volume or revenue.
When the math doesn’t add up, perception becomes the product.
“OpenAI is attempting to give themselves a trillion-dollar valuation but the numbers don’t add up,” I told the interviewer. “I can understand 10x multipliers in software, but does anyone know how much a trillion dollars is? If a billion is a thousand million, then a trillion is a thousand billion.”
A quote from me for the Forbes article.
That’s a 270x multiplier on annual revenue; nearly 30 times higher than the multipliers that the most profitable tech giants use. The only way to sustain those numbers is through circular deals, leveraged equity, and inflated press cycles.
The issue isn’t just investor risk. It’s systemic that gives a false narrative to the economy. Especially when a company is private and looking for an IPO at a later date. When this bubble pops, it won’t just hit venture capital firms. It’ll hit real people. Real retirement funds, real individual investors, and the very real general public… the same way the dot-com bust and housing crisis did.
“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 dump the stock and crash the market?” I said. “The general public. And that, I have a big fucking problem with.” – Me.
Circular Deals vs. Real Innovation
What’s happening in AI today reminds me of the early dot-com era. Back when startup founders were more concerned with “eyeballs” and buzzwords than product-market fit. I was a pool and landscape guy at the time, servicing multi-million dollar homes. Many from dot-com guys.
They would spend months building a 5,000 square foot house, move the family and kids in with all the cars you’d expect to see in the driveway, and before the furniture moved in, the company filed for bankruptcy and the family was gone.
- “History doesn’t repeat itself,” I told the publisher, “but it does rhyme.”
- Circular deals create the illusion of innovation.. and that illusion can last for years.
Company A “invests” in Company B, which “partners” with Company A, and suddenly both valuations increase. No real customers. No meaningful cash flow. Just a prettier balance sheet and a news announcement that gets people excited about investing once the company goes public.
And it’s easy to mistake motion for momentum. It works well until the music stops and the stock crashes.
“When that faith breaks,” I said, “the bubble pops. And real people lose first. That’s when I get pissed.”
The DOMINAIT Philosophy: Build Value, Then Talk About It
At DOMINAIT.ai, our approach is the exact opposite. We don’t chase the hype; we build the product.
Every dollar invested in Ryker, our post-AGI intelligent framework, has come from within. From Jason Criddle & Associates, and me personally.
We haven’t in the last 10 years raised outside capital before having a fully functional, scalable system. I learned that after building my first iteration of The Smartr App Company. It took so long to pay back investors who literally never helped us do anything to build that company. Not understanding that their little bit of cash did nothing but pay for a day of coding. And we had to give away so much equity for a piggy bank’s worth of coins, with people calling me every week or month who didn’t understand we were building the product and had no revenue yet.
I learned a couple of valuable lessons from that first SaaS company:
- Money without support is worthless.
- Don’t invite investors until you have a profitable or profiting product.
We’re about to open investor opportunities for the first time ever with DOMINAIT, and we just did with Carbon. And it’s not because we need funding. It’s because we’re ready to scale.
“Like Tony Stark building Iron Man in a cave with a box of scraps, we built DOMINAIT the hard way, with purpose,” I 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.”
They weren’t interested in supporting my vision. And as I just mentioned… money without support is worthless. I’m not looking for an acquisition. I’m looking to build a team.
We don’t do MVPs. We don’t launch prototypes.
We build complete systems and brands, with tools people can use on day one. That’s what separates DOMINAIT.ai and Carbon from every hype-based company out there.
Carbon: The Blueprint for Sustainable Tech
When I co-created Carbon (downloadcarbon.com) with Shaz Khan, we took the same philosophy we used with DOMINAIT: No minimum viable products. No shortcuts. No premature hype. Build the product, get every piece in place, find all of your revenue sources, close your first anchor partners, then start a friends and family round. I even wrote an article about putting Shaz in the hot seat.
The app connects car enthusiasts nationwide through a social network, allowing them to find local events, buy and sell vehicles and parts, earn referral rewards, and even access collector insurance directly through partners like Phoenix Insurance. And that’s just a few of the options the car community has access to.
It’s a real business solving real problems. It’s not a speculative financial vehicle doing circular deals that don’t drive value or revenue. And it’s not a redo of the dot-com era of cleaning pools at abandoned houses.
Both Carbon and DOMINAIT.ai are launching in January, with investor opportunities now open for the first time at info@DOMINAIT.ai and info@DownloadCarbon.com.
We’ve spent three years building value in Ryker, and a full year building features to support the car community in Carbon, not vapor.
“Our software has always been more successful because we refuse to release something incomplete,” I said in Forbes Business Insider. “Every tool we’ve built, from to SmartrHoldings, to DOMINAIT, to Carbon, was profitable before outside investors even came into the picture.”
A Different Kind of Circular Economy
It’s funny, in that circular deals are all about perception of movement. But our companies, from SmartrCommerce to DOMINAIT, have built what I call a productive circular economy; where value truly cycles between users, developers, investors, and partners. Everyone wins with our systems.
We don’t just sell to customers. We partner with them. We reward them for using, referring, and helping grow the system. It’s a new economic loop. One where the flow of money reflects value creation, not value inflation.
Our customers are investors. Our investors are users. And our users are builders. That’s not circular. That’s synergy.
Investor FOMO and the Illusion of Progress
Every tech bubble runs on the same engine: Fear of Missing Out.
Circular deals make investors feel like they’re watching exponential growth, even when the books are bleeding red. It’s a show designed to attract more money into the cycle once a company goes public.
“These companies are fueling hype to raise their stock price before going public,” I said. “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.”
That’s the illusion of momentum. It’s not progress, it’s pressure and BS. It’s built on a foundation of speculative sand.
DOMINAIT, on the other hand, is built like architecture, piece by piece, with structure and purpose in place.
“You can’t cheat physics,” I said with a smile. “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.”
Circular Deals Can’t Buy Integrity
The irony of today’s trillion-dollar valuations is that the companies with the most funding often have the least accountability. Every quarter is a new headline, a new announcement, a new partnership, but the same numbers underneath. Hence the need for the redirection.
As I told the publisher last night, “We’re watching companies sell ideas rather than outcomes. When you focus on investor returns before product delivery, you’ve already lost sight of the mission.”
DOMINAIT.ai and Carbon are proof that the opposite still works. You can build first, earn second, and scale third, and still attract investors who value ethics over ego.
And as more people wake up to how circular deals inflate the market, the appetite for grounded companies will only grow.
The Future of DOMINAIT and Carbon
When we officially launch DOMINAIT.ai and Carbon this January, both platforms will be live, functional, and generating revenue from day one. There’s no guessing game, no speculation, and no circular deals propping us up.
Our investors will see what they’re buying… a real company with real revenue and a clear roadmap.
We’ve spent years building infrastructure that creates opportunities for others; from Ryker, our intelligent AI partner system, to The Grid, our decentralized compute network, to Smartr’s ecosystem, that lets entrepreneurs automate and scale their businesses.
Because that’s the future: transparency, collaboration, and ownership.
My Final Word to Builders and Investors
If you’re an entrepreneur, a developer, or an investor watching the AI market unfold, here’s my advice:
- Don’t get caught in the cycle. Support the brands that make dollars and sense.
- Circular deals make headlines, not legacies.
- Real value comes from building something people need, something they love, and something that works.
And when you’re ready to see what that looks like, reach out. Because at DOMINAIT.ai, we’re not chasing hype. We’re building history.
Investor inquiries:
DOMINAIT.ai – Where Innovation Meets Integrity.
I am Jason Criddle, Founder of Jason Criddle & Associates, SmartrHoldings and all of its brands… Carbon, DOMINAIT.ai, RezultDriven, SmartrCommerce, SmartrHoldings, SmartrLiving, SmartrMarketing, SmartrVeterans, SmartrWomen, TheRealJasonCriddle, TVBuilderPro, TVStartupNow, and the brand that started me on my path to leadership and building wealth for others and myself, Wellness by Jason.
I’ve authored 19 books, a dozen of which, I was blessed with them becoming best sellers. I write extensively online and on all of the blogs on the websites I own, as well as Quora when I get a chance.
You can listen to me on Podcasts, many Radio shows, and occasionally see me on the news.
All I care about is serving God and my family, playing with my kids, building my legacy, and helping all of my clients become successful on their own journeys. Each platform I have built, was created for YOU, the user, customer, or affiliate, to become successful as you go through this life as well.
Connect with me on LinkedIn if you want to set an appointment or get a free consultation for your brand, or become part of our sales and leadership team.