Scott Stevenson, founder and CEO of Spellbook, has accused AI startups of inflating their real revenues to win VC funding and misleading journalists for PR coverage. He highlighted the misuse of the "annual recurring revenue" (ARR) metric, which is used to indicate the annualized value of recurring subscription contracts. Some companies use this metric to calculate future revenue, which can include future future revenues, rather than ARR. The discrepancy between ARR and ARR can take several forms, with some accounting for future revenue based on uncertain future invoices.