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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

#591

Post by rbanffy »

mlinhares wrote: post #381
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, only a small portion of SpaceX's revenue actually comes from Space (payload delivery). At this point they are basically an ISP (Starlink) and a datacenter/leasing company. It's not clear if Musk (SpaceX/X.ai) is really pursuing AI any more - I expect he hasn't necessarily given up on it, and he hasn't said he has, but it seems he's rented out almost all of his GPUs to Anthropic and Google, so that's not going t…

Given the amount of compute rented I doubt there’s anything meaningful left for the people there to do any AI.

They can use still every spare minute that’s contracted but not actually used.

At those scales, that’s absolutely massive, and more computing capacity than most governments have.

Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers

#592

Post by happosai »

simoncion wrote: post #313
happosai wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

> ...burning ten thousand tons of toxic e-waste annually... Expressing water usage in gallons makes it seem really large, too. NASA says[0]: Scientists estimate that about 48.5 tons (44 tonnes or 44,000 kilograms) of meteoritic material falls on Earth each day. If we assume that they're all the heavier v2 units, the total mass of the orbital portion of Starlink is ten point four tons. [1] If we assumed that they last…

a) Meteorites don't have any of toxic chemicals used to build a server with lithium-ion batteries and solar panels

b) we could use the same argument to defend dumping spent nuclear fuel to oceans (like we used to do)

c) I agree with the CO2 issue, grok/spacex/xAI and others should be banned from building gas powered datacenters.

Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers

#593

Post by rbanffy »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #479
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, only a small portion of SpaceX's revenue actually comes from Space (payload delivery). At this point they are basically an ISP (Starlink) and a datacenter/leasing company. It's not clear if Musk (SpaceX/X.ai) is really pursuing AI any more - I expect he hasn't necessarily given up on it, and he hasn't said he has, but it seems he's rented out almost all of his GPUs to Anthropic and Google, so that's not going t…

Maybe they'll become an AI company again after they've abused their privileged access as hardware providers to reverse-engineer Google and Anthropic's weights and operations.

That doesn’t seem beyond Elon’s capacity to rationalise.

Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers

#594

Post by Waterluvian »

manmal wrote: post #485
vdfs wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bubble will never pop as long as stay in it's bubble form

Usually there’s some environmental disturbance eventually, that makes it burst.

So… data centres in space it is.

Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers

#595

Post by pqtyw »

sublimefire wrote: post #127
somewhatgoated wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Google competing with SpaceX?

If you look at the IPO filings you’ll see that Spacex as we know it is just a small part of the expected revenue generator. It is supposedly Grok and AI, hence Google competitor.

Well you or me also can publish a statement claiming we are Google's competitors. That doesn't mean they'll take it seriously.

Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers

#596

Post by kennywinker »

MrMorden wrote: post #362
kennywinker wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, somehow the servers can run hot in space without a problem?

No; if you try to do this you don't launch in the first place because the amount of servers required to be useful can't be cooled within your payload budget.

It seems like you are agreeing with me while sounding like you’re arguing with me… confusing.

Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers

#597

Post by TheJoeMan »

comboy wrote: post #162

Google renting infra from xAI, I did not see that coming. My understanding of what computers are doing, what companies are doing and what governments are doing seems to be getting worse day by day.

I’m more confused what they’re going to do with all the infra? What could all those GPU’s be doing? Just inference?

Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers

#598

Post by qwytw »

diordiderot wrote: post #204
shiandow wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Orbital datacenters sound like a dangerous bet. I couldn't think of a worse place for a lot of delecate electronics.

Boomers and luddites won't let them be built on earth so no other option really

Well it would be a lot easier if those companies wanted to build them in uninhabited areas in the middle of nowhere with no infrastructure. Somehow they don't want to do that...

Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers

#599

Post by toraway »

transcriptase wrote: post #399
supertroop wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short memory. When musk was buying all of this capacity it was billed as xai is going to take over the world. Instead grok is a flop and now he has extra capacity. If xai was a data center he’d be smart. But it is a failed Ai venture. It’s like training your dog not to jump on the sofa. But then you fail to train to stay off and then brag about how you trained it to stay ON the sofa.

Source: vibes

Huh? That's just basic history of xAI. At no point was xAI being sold as a Coreweave-like middleman leasing out data centers to hyperscalars. That's a boring, regular business. The pitch was that xAI would develop groundbreaking AI models for Grok which would attract actual users and generate revenue.

That evidently did not work out, otherwise these deals wouldn't be happening. OpenAI and Anthropic aren't leasing out their datacenters, if they did it would be obvious something was grossly wrong with their projected growth.

Re: Google to pay SpaceX $920M a month for compute capacity at xAI data centers

#600

Post by pjscott »

zxspectrum1982 wrote: post #371

How can SpaceX have so much GPU spare capacity? It doesn't make any sense. Did Musk blindly order humongous amounts of GPUs years ago before any of us had any sense of the scale this was going to reach?

Musk made big investments in building AI data centers starting in 2024, continuing through the present. SpaceX got those assets from xAI, spun off from X, via an acquisition. More details:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_(supercomputer)

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