They have developed an LLM, so they are an AI lab, but the quality of that model suggests they're not a frontier anything.
Grok isn't at the front of the frontier, but they are there for sure.
xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab
11–20 of 580 posts
Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab
#12> And Google is a major shareholder in SpaceX, so they certainly have incentive to juice the valuation of the IPO. Google own 5-6% of the shares of SpaceX. SpaceX is seeking a valuation of $1.77T which means Google's shares would be worth $88.5B-$106.2B. I'm not a skeptic of AI/LLMs but this makes me deeply suspicious of these circular deals. What happens when the music stops?
> I'm not a skeptic of AI/LLMs but this makes me deeply suspicious of these circular deals. What happens when the music stops?
A financial crash that will make the 2007ff crisis look tame in comparison. That is why Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX (which xAI belongs to) are all going public soon and why NASDAQ bent the rules to include them... the current owners all want to raid pension savings worldwide [1] to get their payday before the bubble inevitably bursts.
And when it bursts, you can bet that the vultures will use their fresh cash to buy up assets at fire-sale prices. For the truly rich, a boom-bust cycle is only one thing, an opportunity to achieve extraordinary profit.
Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab
#13> And Google is a major shareholder in SpaceX, so they certainly have incentive to juice the valuation of the IPO. Google own 5-6% of the shares of SpaceX. SpaceX is seeking a valuation of $1.77T which means Google's shares would be worth $88.5B-$106.2B. I'm not a skeptic of AI/LLMs but this makes me deeply suspicious of these circular deals. What happens when the music stops?
[deleted]
Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab
#14> And Google is a major shareholder in SpaceX, so they certainly have incentive to juice the valuation of the IPO. Google own 5-6% of the shares of SpaceX. SpaceX is seeking a valuation of $1.77T which means Google's shares would be worth $88.5B-$106.2B. I'm not a skeptic of AI/LLMs but this makes me deeply suspicious of these circular deals. What happens when the music stops?
There's no realistic way for the music to stop. The demand for LLMs is staggering and the big providers are charging full freight for inference. They might not make back the money from training but these data centers are definitely going to be fully utilized for at least the next 5 years.
Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab
#15They have developed an LLM, so they are an AI lab, but the quality of that model suggests they're not a frontier anything.
I have the pro account for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok.
They all have various strengths and weaknesses. My favorite is still ChatGPT, then Gemini/Claude, then Grok.
Grok often feels 1-2 generations behind the competition in general use, but it has three things that I love:
1. It seems to be the best at understanding current events. Maybe due to X integration, or some other tool call optimization in the backend? I don't know, but I often ask about things going on, and the other models have outdated info, give unhelpful answers, etc.
2. It is generally the least sycophantic for personal things. Anthropic is getting here too. ChatGPT and Gemini are working on this, but previous models in those families would almost never say anything negative about what I am doing. Sometimes I need career advice, personal advice, etc and I like the tone of how it responds. I think Claude will be caught up soon.
3. For professional work, there are certain topics that other models would refuse to engage with. At my last company we had an enormous amount of legal users. When a deposition would need a summary on certain topics, most models would refuse. Grok would not. I understand the need for safety and I don't blame the other model providers, but for some professional use cases you NEED a model that is capable of handling sensitive subjects.
Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab
#16They have developed an LLM, so they are an AI lab, but the quality of that model suggests they're not a frontier anything.
[flagged]
Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab
#17> And Google is a major shareholder in SpaceX, so they certainly have incentive to juice the valuation of the IPO. Google own 5-6% of the shares of SpaceX. SpaceX is seeking a valuation of $1.77T which means Google's shares would be worth $88.5B-$106.2B. I'm not a skeptic of AI/LLMs but this makes me deeply suspicious of these circular deals. What happens when the music stops?
There's no realistic way for the music to stop. The demand for LLMs is staggering and the big providers are charging full freight for inference. They might not make back the money from training but these data centers are definitely going to be fully utilized for at least the next 5 years.
Data center operators are in the business of selling electricity. They do not command large PE multiples. This is an even worse business, because xAI decided to also be the bagholder for the NVIDIA graphic cards. Not to mention they finance an unreasonable number of 20-somethings on way too large salaries with shitty opinions and no AGI delivered.
Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab
#18They have developed an LLM, so they are an AI lab, but the quality of that model suggests they're not a frontier anything.
> the quality of that model
I guess the benchmarks disagree, but whenever I need to find specific information that does not easily show up with a web search, I try chatgpt, gemini and grok. Grok surfaces what I was looking for more often than the others.
Things like "find the github repo from 2017 that does $vague_thing".
Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab
#19They have developed an LLM, so they are an AI lab, but the quality of that model suggests they're not a frontier anything.
And they are planning (well "planning" if you believe Elon) to start building their LLM over from scratch, which means they need a HUGE ass training data center, i.e. not a data center for inference to do so.
Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab
#20They have developed an LLM, so they are an AI lab, but the quality of that model suggests they're not a frontier anything.
I have the pro account for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok. They all have various strengths and weaknesses. My favorite is still ChatGPT, then Gemini/Claude, then Grok. Grok often feels 1-2 generations behind the competition in general use, but it has three things that I love: 1. It seems to be the best at understanding current events. Maybe due to X integration, or some other tool call optimization in the backend?…
My SO works in audit/compliance and business Gemini definitely does not refuse to answer.