Is this admission that google’s proprietary chips etc. are not cutting it? Why would you need a bunch of nvidia GPUs if you have your own silicon? (AFAIK they have their own for both inference and training do they not?)
Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
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Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Either that or SpaceX is permanently turning xAI's assets into a neocloud because xAI itself has no traction. The whole thing looks rather desperate. I wonder what SpaceX's margins are on these contracts.
SpaceX has recently started pitching itself as an orbital datacenter company. If you buy into that business model (or pretend to), it makes sense for SpaceX to start selling compute early. Their "earthside compute" clients of today are "skyside compute" clients of tomorrow. A part of Musk's old pitch for Starlink was: space-based solar makes perfect sense for powering space assets, and no sense whatsoever for powerin…
> if anyone at all can make space-based datacenters economical, it's SpaceX
Let's hope burning ten thousand tons of toxic e-waste annually in upper atmoshphere never becomes economical. Or mankind gets to senses and bans externalizing your e-waste problem by burning in atmosphere...
Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#153Is there any data on whether Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Anthropic, OpenAI etc are most cost efficient in getting datacenter compute online and operating it? I'd be interested in how large the range is here across company and region and specific data center and how it relates to companies like Hetzner if at all.
> Is there any data on whether Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Anthropic, OpenAI etc are most cost efficient in getting datacenter compute online and operating it?
Well considering that ~80% of the price is hardware deprecation, I don't know why they'd be considerably worse than anyone else at negotiating hardware deals.
Typically when you buy in bulk, you have more sway.
Companies like Google also have in-house chips like TPUs that are substantially cheaper for inference for them to make than anyone else can get through Nvidia.
Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is Google competing with SpaceX?
They’re both AI companies
All companies are now AI companies.
Just like a while ago all companies were suddenly Ads companies.
The entire tech sector is one big FOMO - once you reach certain scale you do exactly the same thing as everyone else.
Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their satellite internet business is the only thing which makes them money, which is enabled by their orbital launch business which is as of right now not profitable and I have no idea of if it ever will be but without it they would not be able to launch enough satellites. Their stupidity with AI and buying X mostly seems to be about scamming investors to make Musk even richer. Like this particular deal is just them…
I can understand this being a move to increase valuation, but I can't connect with the stupidity and scamming investors argument.
Sorry, I was unclear. With that I did not talk about this particular deal. This particular deal seems sane. XAI built more compute that they can use themselves since Grok is not very successful so to not just have the hardware standing there they rent it out to competitors. Makes total sense.
It is other things Musk has gone with Twitter and SpaceX which are shady.
Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#156Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#157380 dollars per second... Good to know I could afford my own data center for an appreciable fraction of a minute.
plus $473 per second from Anthropic
> As part of that deal, Anthropic agreed to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion per month through 2029 to rent all the available compute from its Colossus 1 data center near Memphis, Tennessee, that xAI — now part of SpaceX — originally built for its own artificial intelligence efforts.
I don't get why SpaceX is going public. But anyway, well played, the whole crypto mining that dried out GPUs back in the day seems tiny now.
Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
SpaceX has recently started pitching itself as an orbital datacenter company. If you buy into that business model (or pretend to), it makes sense for SpaceX to start selling compute early. Their "earthside compute" clients of today are "skyside compute" clients of tomorrow. A part of Musk's old pitch for Starlink was: space-based solar makes perfect sense for powering space assets, and no sense whatsoever for powerin…
Space-based datacenters simply won't work. That people are talking about them shows Musk is the greatest snake oil salesman the world has ever seen.
> won’t work
A datacenter (earthbound or space) itself is a fantastical idea until a mix of events and inventions made it feasible to build them to sell compute.
Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#159“If we fail to deliver access to the committed amount of GPUs by September 30, 2026, then following a one-month grace period, Google may immediately terminate the agreement or accept the number of GPUs provided, with a corresponding pro rata reduction in the monthly fees. After December 31, 2026, the agreement may be terminated by either party upon 90 days' notice.” https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000…
Either that or SpaceX is permanently turning xAI's assets into a neocloud because xAI itself has no traction. The whole thing looks rather desperate. I wonder what SpaceX's margins are on these contracts.
This is all just the typical Elon hate. What's desperate about getting paid $920,000,000 per month? If that's desperation, I'd love to start groveling more!
Given extreme supply constraints, it's very unlikely that Google or Anthropic will just suddenly cancel right after the IPO unless their own demand collapses. And even if this were true, what value would that provide Musk? Could you imagine if your newly public company suddenly received termination notices from your two largest compute customers? Disaster.
Try logic.
Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
SpaceX has recently started pitching itself as an orbital datacenter company. If you buy into that business model (or pretend to), it makes sense for SpaceX to start selling compute early. Their "earthside compute" clients of today are "skyside compute" clients of tomorrow. A part of Musk's old pitch for Starlink was: space-based solar makes perfect sense for powering space assets, and no sense whatsoever for powerin…
When I hear space I think "that's the perfect location for a data center", since data centers are lightweight, small, require little power, don't need human intervention, have lifetimes measured in decades and don't have to reject heat. Since space easily satisfies these requirements, space is an ideal deployment location for data centers.
Yeah... What am I missing? Like why isn't this just laughed at when it's proposed?