Assertion Partly supported AI assessment confidence: 95% certainty 5/5 debate potential 1/5

Lanzone: Ask Jeeves valuation fell from $10 billion to $100 million

Jim Lanzone · Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone: The Yahoo Turnaround Plan | 20VC #911 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Jul 29, 2022 · at 26:09

Jim Lanzone, CEO of Yahoo, discusses joining Ask Jeeves in the early 2000s following the dot-com bubble collapse.

0:00 / 0:15exact quote · 15.1s

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“When I got to ask, there were, it was post nine, 11, there were rolling blackouts in California. People were taking sodas from the machine home at night. They had gone from, you know, a ten billion dollar valuation to a hundred million dollar valuation.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

Ask Jeeves (Ask.com) saw its valuation drop from $10 billion to $100 million following the dot-com crash.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

The claim asserts that Ask Jeeves dropped from a peak valuation of $10 billion to a trough of $100 million. According to historical financial data and SEC filings, the claim's trough figure is well-supported: Ask Jeeves' market capitalization indeed dropped to approximately $100 million (and briefly lower, to $25–$30 million at its absolute lowest stock price of $0.86). However, the peak valuation is inaccurate: at its peak share price of $190.50 in November 1999, Ask Jeeves achieved a peak market capitalization of approximately $4.6 billion to $4.8 billion, not $10 billion. Because the trough valuation is accurate while the peak valuation is significantly exaggerated, the verdict is partially true.

Ask Jeeves' historical peak market capitalization reached $4.6 billion to $4.8 billion in November 1999, not $10 billion.
Ask Jeeves' post-crash trough market capitalization dropped to around $100 million in 2001–2002 (with non-affiliate market value reported at $127.5 million in early 2002 and an intraday low market cap of $25M–$30M).

Checked against

[1] grokipedia.com [2] internetnews.com [3] internetnews.com [4] uscourts.gov [5] cnet.com [6] encyclopedia.com [7] slashgear.com [8] forbes.com

assessed as of 2026-07-23

This assessment is an AI reading of a public statement, made against the cited references with the confidence shown. It can be wrong. The quote, the tape and the references are all on this page; if something is off, use report an error below. full disclaimer →

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Ask Jeeves

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