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xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab

martinalderson.com

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Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab

#361

Post by root_axis »

blactuary wrote: post #308

Writing this: > In comparison, SpaceX/xAI are incredible at building datacentres on time. The original Colossus 1 datacentre was built in 122 days. Musk's empire does have a huge advantage in really understanding how to plan, build and execute enormous infrastructure projects quickly Without even mentioning that it was done illegally and the air pollution they are creating with gas turbines is wildly irresponsible

Interesting that Anthropic doesn't feel that leasing an illegally powered data center is a risk to their business operations or brand.

Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab

#362

Post by raducu »

johnsmith1840 wrote: post #140
raducu wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of people are emotionally unprepared for a world where the music doesn't stop. I've been wrong before. However, when was the last time this business model made sense -- that facebook, SpaceX and others, all just pivot from their market niche to general purpose AI datacenter providers. How on Earth does this make sense? What happens in a few years when DeepSeek runs on the chinese chips like the Huawei Ascend…

Energy and datacenter scale. US is a near monopoly of this pairing. A crash will result in the removal of the fluff and ocerpricing of it all but the stance is beyond strong. Unless China outcompetes Nvidea AND TSMC AND magically gets 4x cheaper energy they are in a much weaker stance for the long haul.

> AND magically gets 4x cheaper energy they are in a much weaker stance for the long haul.

By energy you mean electricity,the nuclear, solar and hydro-- the kind China has installed new 2TW capacity over the last decade while US installed 0.2TW capacity in the same time?

Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab

#363

Post by LearnYouALisp »

zoogeny wrote: post #72

If xAI is a datacenter REIT, it is a special kind that has a promise that no other datacenter provider could dream of: LEO datacenters. As far-fetched as that may sound, the biggest profit center for SpaceX in my understanding was Starlink. xAI already has extremely high-bandwidth connections from Earth to LEO available. Connecting that to solar powered orbital datacenters seems doable in realistic timeframes, especi…

Cost per pound? Then $/Watts/TFLOPS minus cost per pound?

Out of curiosity (since I basically never saw $/lb mentioned in any replies anywhere on this, which is hilarious; like talking about having your grain mill at 10,000ft/in the mountains since sunlight is better there): Have you ever tried a forSpace Program?

(And not only 100mi or more above, they're 17,500 mph faster--Mach 22 Datacenters in an oxygen-free, higher-radiation, insulated environment with absolutely no resources)

Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab

#364

Post by shitlord »

TSiege wrote: post #6

> 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?

When the music stops, this type of trade simply stops being profitable. It only works because of SpaceX's insane P/E.

Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab

#365

Post by VirusNewbie »

gruez wrote: post #339
VirusNewbie wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing has a massive lag when it comes to CPI. CPI works by asking how much people pay for rent. If home prices raise 20% in one year (not at all unreasonable in various times in the last ten years), it takes a long time for that to be reflected as many people have their rents fixed, some people have rent control, some landlords will only raise rents on new tenants, etc.

>Housing has a massive lag when it comes to CPI. >[...] many people have their rents fixed, some people have rent control, some landlords will only raise rents on new tenants, etc. In other words, rent is lagged when it comes to the CPI... because the rent people actually pay is also lagged?

for existing, well established renters, sure. For new renters, or people who move, or people who face housing insecurity, or people who want to buy homes, it's much higher and not accurately reflected in CPI.

Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab

#366

Post by JumpCrisscross »

frankacter wrote: post #360
overgard wrote: post #343

AFAIK the Colossus data center was more or less "brute force" when it comes to building a datacenter fast -- ie it was very expensive and they cut some pretty ugly corners (their generators are "temporary" to get around regulations, but I don't see how they can possibly be "temporary" and they create a massive amount of pollution compared to other power sources). The reason I point that out is the article mentions th…

Cheap. Fast. Good. Pick two. Colossus is the world's largest single, unified GPU cluster, all GPUs acting as one coherent supercomputer rather than fragmented pools or multi-site setups. They spun it up in a fraction of the time by all estimates. It's not something you can just throw money at and reproduce the results. Per Jensen Huang: "As far as I know, there's only one person in the world who could do that; Elon i…

Yeah, maybe the thing xAI gets is perfect is the enemy of good (enough).

Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab

#367

Post by pants2 »

frankacter wrote: post #360
overgard wrote: post #343

AFAIK the Colossus data center was more or less "brute force" when it comes to building a datacenter fast -- ie it was very expensive and they cut some pretty ugly corners (their generators are "temporary" to get around regulations, but I don't see how they can possibly be "temporary" and they create a massive amount of pollution compared to other power sources). The reason I point that out is the article mentions th…

Cheap. Fast. Good. Pick two. Colossus is the world's largest single, unified GPU cluster, all GPUs acting as one coherent supercomputer rather than fragmented pools or multi-site setups. They spun it up in a fraction of the time by all estimates. It's not something you can just throw money at and reproduce the results. Per Jensen Huang: "As far as I know, there's only one person in the world who could do that; Elon i…

Colossus took an old manufacturing plant where they made rangetops and stoves and turned it into a functioning 100,000-GPU datacenter in 122 days. That's a truly insane turnaround time!

Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab

#368

Post by emodendroket »

NewJazz wrote: post #336
emodendroket wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People “personify” their cars but I don’t think because they think cars have human cognition

Not in the same way.

That doesn't seem to be much more than special pleading without an explanation of how you think it's different.

Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab

#369

Post by emodendroket »

timfsu wrote: post #306
emodendroket wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. That makes sense, but occasionally you ask about an issue where it's clearly received political instruction from the commissar and it acts totally lobotom…

We saw this too with Gemini specifically. My favorite example - we built a hallucination detector (given the input, does the output make any false claims) in Gemini, and after the Seahawks won the Superbowl in February, it would consistently flag that as "not possible".

I believe it was assuring me the Israelis would never invade southern Lebanon and declare a buffer zone inside it after that had already happened.

Re: xAI is looking more like a datacentre REIT than a frontier lab

#370

Post by dpark »

snypher wrote: post #286
noosphr wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My local inference rig now costs three times what I bought it for. If I'd gotten the max ram I could at the time I would have made $10k after selling the excess to my current spec. How someone can look at an asset class thats appreciated an order of magnitude in the last two years and say it will depreciate in value when the tailwinds are even stronger now is beyond me.

Yes, toilet paper and N95s were expensive and hard to buy once, which is why I stockpiled a lifetime supply of them. Suckers!

“Graph go up to the right. Graph stop at edge of paper. Must go up forever!”
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