Mr Perryman said he was usually “super allergic” to social media, but had been sharing videos as part of his campaign to his 40,000 followers.
He is familiar with getting strangers to meet up; for his day job, he organises events for singletons.
Mr Perryman, who now lives in Stratford in east London, said he had a “real mix” and a “lovely bunch” of people coming to his scheduled meet-ups. He hopes to keep in touch with his new friends.
“I don’t want to put myself out there and then disappear after people have had the courage to come out and see me on my own in the pub; I’m not going to leave them behind.
“Sometimes a four-hour conversation like that is a deeper conversation than you might have with a friend that you only see once every four months or whatever, and it’s really nice.”
Dean Perryman (bottom right) usually wears bright orange so people can spot him easily
A man has been inviting strangers to sit with him in pubs every day in December in his effort to tackle loneliness.
Dean Perryman, from Hockley in Essex, has been reserving empty tables and advertising his whereabouts online.
The 29-year-old says more than 64 people have joined him and he has booked a table at a pub in Rayleigh on Christmas morning.
Mr Perryman felt compelled to run his “empty chair” campaign after his best friend recently took his own life, and he said the response had been “really overwhelming” and “really positive”.
“It’s very new for me and I’ve loved every second of it.”
Mr Perryman said he was usually “super allergic” to social media, but had been sharing videos as part of his campaign to his 40,000 followers.
He is familiar with getting strangers to meet up; for his day job, he organises events for singletons.
Mr Perryman, who now lives in Stratford in east London, said he had a “real mix” and a “lovely bunch” of people coming to his scheduled meet-ups. He hopes to keep in touch with his new friends.
“I don’t want to put myself out there and then disappear after people have had the courage to come out and see me on my own in the pub; I’m not going to leave them behind.
“Sometimes a four-hour conversation like that is a deeper conversation than you might have with a friend that you only see once every four months or whatever, and it’s really nice.”
Supplied
Mr Perryman has been booking tables in Essex and London
Mr Perryman said he had no idea how depressed his good friend was.
“There are so many people out there who live their life seeing multiple empty chairs because they feel lonely,” he said.
“I’m not great at a lot of things but I can sit down in the pub and chat so I thought I’d start there.”
Mr Perryman arranged a group walk, meeting at the Serpentine Lido in Hyde Park on Christmas Eve morning, followed by a gathering at a pub in Southend-on-Sea in the afternoon.
He has booked tables at pubs in Chelmsford, Hockley and Leigh-on-Sea in the days following Christmas.
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The last three months of 2025 were a rollercoaster of tech sell-offs and rallies, as circular deals, debt issuances, and high valuations fueled concerns over an AI bubble.
Such volatility may be an early sign of how AI investment is set to evolve as investors pay closer attention to who is spending money and who is making it, according to Stephen Yiu, chief investment officer at Blue Whale Growth Fund.
Investors, especially retail investors who are exposed to AI through ETFs, typically have not differentiated between companies with a product but no business model, those burning cash to fund AI infrastructure, or those on the receiving end of AI spending, Yiu told CNBC.
So far, “every company seems to be winning,” butAI is in its early innings, he said. “It’s very important to differentiate” between different types of companies, which is “what the market might start to do,” Yiu added.
This illustration taken on April 20, 2018, in Paris shows apps for Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple, plus the reflection of a binary code displayed on a tablet screen.
Lionel Bonaventure | Afp | Getty Images
He sees three camps: private companies or startups, listed AI spenders and AI infrastructure firms.
The first group, which includes OpenAI and Anthropic, lured $176.5 billion in venture capital in the first three quarters of 2025, per PitchBook data. Meanwhile, Big Tech names such as Amazon, Microsoft and Meta are the ones cutting checks to AI infrastructure providers such as Nvidia and Broadcom.
Blue Whale Growth Fund measures a company’s free cash flow yield, which is the amount of money a company generates after capital expenditure, against its stock price, to figure out whether valuations are justified.
Most companies within the Magnificent 7 are “trading a significant premium” since they started heavily investing in AI, Yiu said.
“When I’m looking at valuations in AI, I would not want to position — even though I believe in how AI is going to change the world — into the AI spenders,” he added, adding that his firm would rather be “on the receiving end” as AI spending is set to further impact company finances.
The AI “froth” is “concentrated in specific segments rather than across the broader market,” Julien Lafargue, chief market strategist at Barclays Private Bank and Wealth Management, told CNBC.
The bigger risk lies with companies that are securing investment from the AI bull run but are yet to generate earnings — “for example, some quantum computing-related companies,” Lafargue said.
“In these cases, investor positioning seems driven more by optimism than by tangible results,” he added, saying that “differentiation is key.”
The need for differentiation also reflects an evolution of Big Tech business models. Once asset-light firms are increasingly asset-heavy as they gobble up technology, power and land needed for their bullish AI strategies.
Companies like Meta and Google have morphed into hyperscalers that invest heavily in GPUs, data centers, and AI-driven products, which changes their risk profile and business model.
Dorian Carrell, Schroders’ head of multi-asset income, said valuing these companies like software and capex-light plays may no longer make sense — especially as companies are still figuring out how to fund their AI plans.
“We’re not saying it’s not going to work, we’re not saying it’s not going to come through in the next few years, but we are saying, should you pay such a high multiple with such high growth expectations baked in,” Carrell told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Dec. 1.
Tech turned to the debt markets to fund AI infrastructure this year, though investors were cautious about a reliance on debt. While Meta and Amazon have raised funds this way, “they’re still net cash positioned,” Quilter Cheviot’s global head of technology research and investment strategist Ben Barringer told CNBC’s “Europe Early Edition” on Nov. 20 — an important distinction from companies whose balance sheets may be tighter.
The private debt markets “will be very interesting next year,” Carrell added.
If incremental AI revenues don’t outpace those expenses, margins will compress and investors will question their return on investment, Yiu said.
In addition, the performance gaps between companies could widen further as hardware and infrastructure depreciate. AI spenders will need to factor into their investments, Yiu added. “It’s not part of the P&L yet. Next year onwards, gradually, it will confound the numbers.”
“So, there’s going to be more and more differentiation.”
