GoPro Pivoting Into AI Data Centers - 2026 Gets Dumber

Eli the Computer Guy (0:00)

The one thing that I do have to say about this story is at least it makes more sense than all birds getting into AI data centers. So I talked about that before with all birds. All birds created tennis shoes. They were like the tennis shoes of Silicon Valley. Oh, they actually IPO for something like $4 billion, and then they cratered because another company creating tennis shoes isn't actually worth that much money. And so they decided to put a tennis shoe, kind of like, shit, you're not, shit, you're not. A tennis shoe company decided to pivot into AI data centers. I did a video about that many months ago, talking about the ridiculous of the AI data center movement. I feel like that's like in 1929, when the shoeshine boy starts giving you advice about stock, that is the point in time you should get out of the stock market. In 2026, when the sneaker company gets into the AI data center-based business, that's probably about the time the bubble has to burst at some point in time. So anyways, I will say this is better than that. So GoPro, remember GoPro? I talk about this with first mover advantage, and I talk about this with companies that we thought were gonna take over the world. One of the generations of technology that we all just seem to forget about nowadays, it's kind of like the GoPro generation. There was Groupon. Remember when Groupon came out, and GoPro came out, and there were a few companies of that particular era that everybody was trying to replicate. GoPro came out with these action cams, and we were like, oh my golly. So there was a whole bunch of different action cams that came out. Groupon, I remember when Groupon was Groupon. Oh my, this is the biggest business to ever exist. Until it wasn't. But anyways, GoPro came out with these action cameras. They thought they were gonna take over the world, and as I've talked about before with macro forces, you can never beat macro forces. And the problem is, is when GoPros came out, there were smartphones. To be clear, there were smartphones, but the image quality was pretty crappy, so it just wasn't good for a lot of things that you were doing, because that was one of the values of GoPro. But then the camera quality on all of these phones got better and better and better and better and better. An issue that GoPro essentially ran into is it isn't that the market completely disappeared, but the side, the total addressable market for their product shrank to the point nobody really cared about it anymore. So GoPro has been struggling for a long time now. And so yeah, they're getting into AI data centers, of course.

Oh, 2026

I may have never told you this before, but I do believe 2026 may be the stupidest year on record. But to be clear, this is probably the least stupid of all the stupid things going on in 2026 But it is still stupid. GoPro joins AI bonanza with pivot into data centers as shares skyrocket 40%.

Because nobody knows AI data centers like a camera company.

Let's see here. GoPro is joining the AI craze. The action camera maker announced on Tuesday it would enter into a definitive merger with Starman Optical, a private photonics company, and expand into AI data center and defense markets according to a release. Quote, we expect this merger to enable GoPro to grow across consumer, commercial, and defense markets as a leading American imaging and optical solutions company, addressing important areas of national security related to cameras, optics, and AI infrastructures, and GoPro's CEO, Nicholas Woodman, in the release. Now, to be clear, I will say, this could not be stupid.

I could also be in a coma, and this is actually 2010, and I'm just dreaming about the future. I don't think that's the case, but maybe, but maybe. So the way this could not be stupid is one of the things to think about in the business world, especially in the technology world, is synergistics. Synergy, right? And synergy is when basically businesses create product lines or service lines or integrate with other companies in things that they already do, but it allows them to expand on whatever their expertise already is. So they already have resources, they already have institutional expertise, they already have certain things, and so basically what we talk about with synergy is you combine with something else, and basically you're able to work together to create something more impressive. So where this could be synergistic, and where this could theoretically be good for GoPro, probably not, but could, is if they hyper-focus on imaging, right? So GoPro has been working on digital imaging for 15, 20 years, and I don't really know when they first got created, but at least 15 years now. And so in the AI world, one of the big things going on right now is basically how to use cameras, how to use cameras and how to use artificial intelligence to pull out more value, right? Like one of the things I've talked about before is like with Ukrainian drones. So one of the problems that Ukrainian drones have right now, when they go in to do their missions, is they're dealing with normal RF frequencies. And so if you look at the feed, if you look at the raw video feed coming back from these Ukrainian drones, you see it is fucking pixelated to hell and back. One, it's pixelated to hell and back because it's not a high-quality feed. And then the other thing too, is that the field of view, basically what the drone is looking at, that area is so large that, you know, I don't know, the difference between a Russian tank and a hay bale.