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OpenAI, Nvidia fuel $1T AI market with web of circular deals

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Re: OpenAI, Nvidia fuel $1T AI market with web of circular deals

#141
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They give you 4 nodes with 1 vcpu and 6GB RAM each for free forever by the way. Most other stuff has a free tier too. I used it to learn terraform and have a kubernetes cluster running. I know it's always trendy to bash oracle and simp for AWS, but it is THE best option for learning and hobbyists.

That's very cool. I was going to get a hetzner for some hobby projects. Can you get that without adding a payment mechanism? For some reason, I'd be more cautious about putting my card into Oracle's offering than anyone else.

> Can you get that without adding a payment mechanism?

No!

There are actually two free tiers.

The limited free tier you get without adding a CC and then this advanced "always free" tier I am using, where you have to use and verify a CC and have to pay big bucks if you mess up.

limited free tier: 300$ to be spent in 30 days

advanced always free tier: https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier...

Re: OpenAI, Nvidia fuel $1T AI market with web of circular deals

#142
post #135

Anyone remember the subprime crisis?

The other day I was helping somebody choose some funds to invest in. The majority of "global" or "index" funds we looked into either directly or indirectly had the largest share of holdings in Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, AMD. Often these were about 50-70% of their portfolio. The returns for the past year look great but the crash is going to be devastating and widespread because so many investments link back to…

I completely withdrew from the US market last Nov 5th.

It's plainly obvious where all of this is going.

Re: OpenAI, Nvidia fuel $1T AI market with web of circular deals

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nvidia is also investing hundreds of billions in OpenAI.

Yes. OpenAI is also investing in AMD. This was discussed yesterday on HN, following some very good explanation by Matt Levine at Bloomberg. This is a way for one party to reduce some risk, by enjoying some upside in the equity of the counterparty. But this is not circular. Circular would be if I sell you an apple worth $0.25 for $2.00, and then you sell it back to me for $2.00, or other similar amount, and I get to m…

> But there is not back and forth buying of the same item, or of rubber/balloons. All the deals seem legit.

Some, certainly, but the vendor-financing deals certainly look circular to the casual observer. Microsoft invests $X into OpenAI for a 51% (or whatever) stake, and that investment then goes straight back to Microsoft to pay for compute credits.

Or Nvidia invests[1] $100m into OpenAI, which OpenAI then turns around and pays back to Nvidia for compute.

The majority of the deals making the news are structured like this; maybe technically those aren't actual ducks[2], but they sure look, walk and talk like ducks.

Similarly structured deals are with Oracle. And Coreweave. And everyone.

It may not be a "circular" deal, but what do you expect people to call it when a company makes a deal to receive cash (not credit, but actual cash) from a vendor, and spends that cash with that vendor?

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[1] I use this word loosely here - the investment is a commitment of 10x $10m tranches.

[2] I.e. circular deals.

Re: OpenAI, Nvidia fuel $1T AI market with web of circular deals

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is How Larry Elisson beat Musk for a short while although Oracle was struggling.' The deals among Oracle, Nvidia, and OpenAI have raised concerns about their circular and potentially risky nature. Oracle is reportedly spending tens of billions on Nvidia's advanced chips, Nvidia plans to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI, and OpenAI uses Oracle's cloud infrastructure through Microsoft's Azure, creating a closed…

It's worth noting Elisson is 2 years older than Trump. What's he going to do with all that money, and what does he care for the risk it's bad or shady? Worst case, he got to be #1 for a bit for a few dozen billion, best case he's hoping AGI will extend his life before he croaks.

> What's he going to do with all that money, and what does he care for the risk it's bad or shady?

The thing that unites Ellison, Trump, Musk, Thiel and a fair few of the other politically active billionaires is the obsession with "legacy" - they want to leave their mark in the history books, figures which will likely be remembered and taught in schools in thousands of years similar to Roman emperors.

Musk is the most obvious with his obsession of settling (and eventually dying) on Mars, Trump is dreaming of getting a Nobel Peace Prize (if only to not let Obama be the only US President who got one), and the rest is hunting for the "invented AGI" crown.

Re: OpenAI, Nvidia fuel $1T AI market with web of circular deals

#145
post #106

All clearly designed to cash in on the speculative value being given to AI companies. Strategically I thought OpenAI's deal of getting 10% of AMD for driving their stock price to $600 was a pretty clever way of creating $97 Billion from nothing - effectively paying for the GPUs they'd purchase. At the same time I would've thought this insider pump and cash-in strategy would be somehow illegal, but I guess anything go…

[deleted]

Re: OpenAI, Nvidia fuel $1T AI market with web of circular deals

#146
post #98

People are bringing up the AMD deal but isn't that giving it too much credence? The deal hasn't had any material consequences yet apart from stock market fluctuations. The bigger problem for me is that AMD doesn't seem like is going to be a player of note in the AI sphere. So this deal like many other big money AI deals look like optics to me.

> AMD doesn't seem like is going to be a player of note in the AI sphere.

I thought AMD is well positioned in the inference space? They have high VRAM, somewhat high connectivity, already shipping pods that are pretty ok for inference? Training is still dominated by nvda and their CUDA moat, but there's an increased need for scalable inference, and that should fit AMD well. Am I wrong in thinking that?

Re: OpenAI, Nvidia fuel $1T AI market with web of circular deals

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, you can get that level of compute locally easy peasy. Learning terraform isn't hard, it's what you stitch together with terraform that is hard.

I think the point here is that free beats easy peasy, especially when learning a new skill, where your easy peasy isn't their easy peasy. And getting something up and running on Oracle Cloud with Terraform is nowhere near easy peasy for someone who never did anything with Terraform ;)

'Back in my day' we learned with VMs for free! The computer you have works without internet, for instance

Re: OpenAI, Nvidia fuel $1T AI market with web of circular deals

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But this is not circular. Circular would be if I sell you an apple worth $0.25 for $2.00 When you draw a circle on a piece of paper do you put your pencil to the paper, start drawing a curve, stop and write the word FRAUD, and then complete the curve? Or do you just draw a circle? I’m assuming that people are saying “circular” in that it looks like the money goes in a circle. (For one example) Nvidia invests in Lam…

This is how financing works. When you buy a house, you get a mortgage from a bank. It is unusual to get a mortgage from a seller. It would feel a bit circular, right? But that is exactly what happens most of the time when people buy a car. They get a loan from the same company that sells them the car. Is that circular? When you replace people with companies, the financing can become much more complex. The example you…

> But that is exactly what happens most of the time when people buy a car. They get a loan from the same company that sells them the car.

No, they don't!

Serious "Citation Needed" here. They get a loan from a financial services company, that is a separate company from the automaker and/or dealership.

The certification and requirements for trading as a credit provider will not be met by neither the auto manufacturer nor the dealership.

> Here's an example that happens every day in the world of housing: banks lend money to house buyers. Then they package the mortgages and sell the resulting mortgage back securities. Then they take the money from the proceeds, and give more loans, and package them and create more mortgage back securities. Seems circular, right?

No, it doesn't! They make out new loans, sure, but they aren't loaning you specifically the proceeds from the sale of your specific mortgage-backed security!

If you happen to get a new loan from the sale of the MBS, it is impossible that only you get that loan, from the sale of an MBS that had only your existing loan.

Seriously, there's laws and regulations around this, and from what you say, with all due respect, it seems that you are unaware of these regulations.[1]

The only reason that these actually-circular deals can go on right now is because OpenAI (and other providers doing similar circular deals) are not publicly traded, and thus there are fewer regulations and even fewer enforcement of what little regulations there are for unlisted companies.

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[1] Why is your handle "credit_guy"? You don't appear to be familiar with the fact that credit providers are heavily regulated in all jurisdictions that we are talking about. I mean, you don't even need to know the specific regulations and certifications necessary, you just need to know things like a dealer cannot be a credit provider too.

Re: OpenAI, Nvidia fuel $1T AI market with web of circular deals

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how financing works. When you buy a house, you get a mortgage from a bank. It is unusual to get a mortgage from a seller. It would feel a bit circular, right? But that is exactly what happens most of the time when people buy a car. They get a loan from the same company that sells them the car. Is that circular? When you replace people with companies, the financing can become much more complex. The example you…

When people buy a car they sometimes get a loan from the auto manufacturer’s financial services arm. What they don’t usually get are warrants struck at a penny for 10% of the manufacturer. You sound like you know what you’re talking about. I only think I know what I’m talking about. Help me understand: What am I missing in the OpenAI / AMD deal that makes it non circular?

> You sound like you know what you’re talking about.

Honestly, I'm not an expert either, but I've run a company, and I can all but guarantee that credit_guy above really does not know what he is talking about.

Re: OpenAI, Nvidia fuel $1T AI market with web of circular deals

#150

How are these "circular deals" different than Boeing (and other heavy civilian equipment makers) providing financing on purchases? My point: Is this simply clutching pearls over the AI/LLM bubble, or is there some substance to this concern? And another: How does it compare against the new breed of Bitcoin treasuries, like Strategy (MSTR.OQ)? As I understand, Strategy uses secondary offerings to continuously see more…

Didn't Boeing's deals turn out to be bad?
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