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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

#421

Post by fragmede »

mikepurvis wrote: post #384
RealityVoid wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's the default assumption but in the new GPU+Memory constrained age isn't true. Is it an age or a temporary situation?

Are current datacenter deployments structured in such a way that the memory can later be moved to newer GPU dies? Or is it all packaged together as on consumer graphics cards? I assumed the latter and therefore that the memory is depreciating along with the GPU cores it's soldered onto PCBs with. ... or is it a different argument being made, perhaps that depreciation for GPUs has slowed because rising demand will kee…

Removing RAM chips off old cards is uneconomical, until it isn't. With things going the way they are, if you've got a card with soldered on RAM that could be transplanted to a newer card, I think you'll start seeing that happening.

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

#422

Post by zoogeny »

LearnYouALisp wrote: post #363
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, hig…

I have not done any calculation on the capex but I'm guessing that SpaceX has. We're also just guessing on what these "datacenters" will look like. It is silly to think of them in the same way we see the football-field-sized ultra secure facilities on land. They can be highly distributed in a way that just wouldn't make sense on land. Perhaps even incrementally built out in the same way that Starlink capacity was.

Regardless, if Google is spending just shy of 1 billion USD per month, that suggests that there is a pretty high ceiling on capex available.

Consider the PR of massive datacenters here on Earth. People complain about noise, water usage. It doesn't even matter if those concerns are valid, the PR is bad enough. That might attract other massive corps that want to outsource instead of deal with the headache of building local.

You realize that not long ago companies were exploring building nuclear power sites next to their data centers to handle the expected power needs?

I'm not saying it will work. I'm saying if it does, SpaceX will own the market for a good while.

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

#423

Post by chii »

egr wrote: post #420

Here is my take: - roughly 1B revenue per month is a good look for SpaceX - provides some credibility to otherwise non-existent xAi business. - pos. News for Google due to their share in SpaceX. - can be interpreted as leasing versus building for Google, a nice Hedge on compute capacity. - saves Capex for Google at time of horrendous GPU, memory costs. It is only a bridge until 2029. What will be the value of the Spa…

> roughly 1B revenue per month is a good look for SpaceX

this agreement between spacex and google can be cancelled with 90 days notice from either party without the other's agreement.

It's purely there to make the IPO look good, on google's part.

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

#424

Post by egr »

root_axis wrote: post #361
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.

Depends on the fine print of the deal. My guess is that it is very favourable for Anthropic. SpaceX very eager for headline news before IPO.

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

#425

Post by hackyhacky »

paulhebert wrote: post #390
frognumber wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very unclear to me. The key question is on direction of LLMs. Right now, LLMs are taking over human jobs. If the cost of silicon+power If this applies to SWEs, lawyers, business analysts, many research scientists, .... this situation could persist for a long, long time. While capital costs less than the inputs of labor (nominal food, housing, etc.), there is no need for labor. The key question is about continued…

> what rational reason is there to employ a human being? To maintain a functioning society and social contract? Is wanting low unemployment in our society not rational?

Correct. Unfortunately, that's not how capitalism makes decisions.

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

#426

Post by Ekaros »

root_axis wrote: post #361
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.

I laughed at brand risk. I think every player in AI is well past the brand risk. Only posturing you see is being too dangerous. And even that is for hype not actually stopping them. Eventually they push the models out despite that. It really is weird market branding wise.

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

#429

Post by watwut »

johnsmith1840 wrote: post #149
treis wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pricing on Open router is clear. Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google all garner a massive premium over deepseek and qwen. There's no other realistic explanation except that they're making bank.

Why do you think Chinese companies can do that? It's government subsidising price they do it with literally every ibdustry. Home grow a bunch discount them federally, let them wipe the foreign markets. If AI is threatened by china why would US NOT do the same? If they did they're in a much stronger position to do so than china. Cheaper energy, more cash, stronger industries. Infrastrucure is thr kind of thing that on…

> Home grow a bunch discount them federally, let them wipe the foreign markets.

US is doing the same and was doing that for decades now. American companies operate on loss for astonishing amounts of money and consider it completely normal. One gotta love complains about Chinese companies selling under price coming from American tech industry.

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

#430

Post by somenameforme »

fluidcruft wrote: post #397
frognumber wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very unclear to me. The key question is on direction of LLMs. Right now, LLMs are taking over human jobs. If the cost of silicon+power If this applies to SWEs, lawyers, business analysts, many research scientists, .... this situation could persist for a long, long time. While capital costs less than the inputs of labor (nominal food, housing, etc.), there is no need for labor. The key question is about continued…

What I don't understand is if nobody has jobs, who's paying the machines to do anything? So okay cool you don't need people to design and build cars. Who's going to buy the cars and where exactly are they finding money? But see also the "radiologists driving to work" meme for why I think tech in general is currently getting high off their own farts.

The overwhelming majority of the labor force remains service, manual labor, and other such stuff that LLMs will have no real effect on. So the economy will be fine, but I do agree with you from a different angle. The entire goal of LLMs seems self destructive. If they're successful then the endgame is completely removing the barriers to entry to producing software and other digital tech. But if we do reach that endgame then the value of tech is going to plummet because there will be absolutely no barriers to entry to compete, or even just individuals homebrewing up what they need on demand.

Like imagine there was something you could buy where you insert some lumber, give it some passable description of furniture, and it outputs it. And you paid $20/month for access to this. And this was all being bankrolled by the furniture industry? I mean, sure guys - it's much appreciated, but I don't think I've ever seen anybody so enthusiastic about digging their own grave. I think it's already obvious that the gazillion dollars of API calls isn't going to materialize - it seems the handful of companies that trialed that are already reversing course hard. And in the future where LLMs are successful, that'd be even more true.

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