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Meta building cloud business to sell excess AI capacity

reuters.com

11–20 of 67 posts

Re: Meta building cloud business to sell excess AI capacity

#11
xAI has shown this to be quite lucrative. And it seems to even make some sense - if the contract can be ended on relatively short notice, you basically have the capacity on stand-by if you ever need it yourself (accumulating GPUs is not trivial), but can monetize it if you don't need it.

Though it's probably a bad sign generally that you can't capitalize on all the GPUs you've acquired.

Re: Meta building cloud business to sell excess AI capacity

#12
post #11

xAI has shown this to be quite lucrative. And it seems to even make some sense - if the contract can be ended on relatively short notice, you basically have the capacity on stand-by if you ever need it yourself (accumulating GPUs is not trivial), but can monetize it if you don't need it. Though it's probably a bad sign generally that you can't capitalize on all the GPUs you've acquired.

> xAI has shown this to be quite lucrative

Come back when you have actual numbers on dollars spent, interest rates and the time spent.

Re: Meta building cloud business to sell excess AI capacity

#13
post #4

For one thing, I still don't understand Meta as a business. It seems like Zuck refused to accept owning a boring ad business and keeps trying to act like a tech business. For another, this seems like a move that happens when the bubble pops. The dotcom bubble went from having tons of business raising fortunes on the promise of business models the internet unlocks to having few internet businesses left at that scale a…

The difference is the hardware will become obsolete in a few years, unlike the dark fibre (really, rights of way) that provided cheap connectivity for years after the crash.

It's obsolete for training but is it obsolete for inference?

Re: Meta building cloud business to sell excess AI capacity

#15
post #12
post #11

xAI has shown this to be quite lucrative. And it seems to even make some sense - if the contract can be ended on relatively short notice, you basically have the capacity on stand-by if you ever need it yourself (accumulating GPUs is not trivial), but can monetize it if you don't need it. Though it's probably a bad sign generally that you can't capitalize on all the GPUs you've acquired.

> xAI has shown this to be quite lucrative Come back when you have actual numbers on dollars spent, interest rates and the time spent.

To be fair to meta, they've been running data centers for almost two decades now, so they'd be in a different position to XAI.

Re: Meta building cloud business to sell excess AI capacity

#16

For one thing, I still don't understand Meta as a business. It seems like Zuck refused to accept owning a boring ad business and keeps trying to act like a tech business. For another, this seems like a move that happens when the bubble pops. The dotcom bubble went from having tons of business raising fortunes on the promise of business models the internet unlocks to having few internet businesses left at that scale a…

> For one thing, I still don't understand Meta as a business Zuck got spooked by apple ads change a few years ago, which crashed the meta's stock to double digit. So Zuck is trying to own a platform. They want to be a version of openai selling ads

Good take! I buy it.

Re: Meta building cloud business to sell excess AI capacity

#17
post #13
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is the hardware will become obsolete in a few years, unlike the dark fibre (really, rights of way) that provided cheap connectivity for years after the crash.

It's obsolete for training but is it obsolete for inference?

The factories won't be obsolete, even if the chips are.

Re: Meta building cloud business to sell excess AI capacity

#18

For one thing, I still don't understand Meta as a business. It seems like Zuck refused to accept owning a boring ad business and keeps trying to act like a tech business. For another, this seems like a move that happens when the bubble pops. The dotcom bubble went from having tons of business raising fortunes on the promise of business models the internet unlocks to having few internet businesses left at that scale a…

> It seems like Zuck refused to accept owning a boring ad business

Zuck sees a real problem: not owning the platform.

Hence the VR and other attempts. He sees what he has today as a dead end. The fear grips him.

In theory Google and Apple could ban Meta’s apps and it would be game over.

Re: Meta building cloud business to sell excess AI capacity

#19
So like likes of AWS are spending crazy sums building capacity citing amazing demand they can’t meet. Meanwhile those with capacity are saying hey maybe we don’t need so much and are building cloud businesses to compete with AWS and flood the market with excess capacity.

Oh yeah, this is gonna end well.

Re: Meta building cloud business to sell excess AI capacity

#20

For one thing, I still don't understand Meta as a business. It seems like Zuck refused to accept owning a boring ad business and keeps trying to act like a tech business. For another, this seems like a move that happens when the bubble pops. The dotcom bubble went from having tons of business raising fortunes on the promise of business models the internet unlocks to having few internet businesses left at that scale a…

Unfortunately he has too much cash since he owns some of the largest social networks and thus receives insane amounts of ad spend… this will not end soon

And he can't be fired by shareholders.
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