51–60 of 99 posts
When gas prices went up in the 70s because of fuel shortage, smaller (more fuel efficient) cars became more popular to use less fuel to do the same thing. I wonder if the same will happen with compute, by making software more efficient, and do the same thing with less compute.
GPUs aren’t scarce. There is just a lot of demand, so prices have gone up. Anyone can get GPUs right now and build out what they need; it’s just a matter of paying more for them than the next company. I’ve been looking at building a multi-TB HBM system lately and they’re readily available - they just cost $400k.
> GPUs aren’t scarce. There is just a lot of demand, so prices have gone up. What does "scarce" mean to you? I'd wager that to most reasonable people it means "available in a supply that, measured against demand, is low". Market forces typically react to such a state by pushing prices up. Saying "they're not scarce, they're just expensive" is just silly. The exception to this would be during e.g. supply chain hiccups…
As such, saying “GPUs are scarce” is an empty statement from a strictly economic perspective - so are all other physical goods. The correct economic phrasing would be “there is a shortage of GPUs” or “GPUs are in high demand”.
Of course, in colloquial English we interpret “GPUs are scarce” as meaning the same thing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anthropic is currently profitable, generating around $1B/quarter and ~$50B in ARR. About 75% to 85% of Anthropic's revenue comes from its usage-based API business, which has a gross margin that exceeds 80%. https://www.tradingkey.com/analysis/stocks/us-stocks/2620181... Meanwhile, OpenAI is at ~$25B ARR, but is likely not yet profitable.
Where are you getting that 80% figure from? Even semi analysis, the most aggressively optimistic analysts, put it at around 60%. https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/anthropic-growth-and-b...
What on earth is that H100 price trend graph. The equally spaced x-axis points are 2x6 months, 6x3 months, 9x1 month. The whole visualisation of the trend is ruined on the back of that. There are liars, damned liars, and people who play silly buggers with scales.
i dont see how compressing the past ruins the present day extrapolation? How does the conclusion change for you if the graph was 3x wider on the left? The title is "rates are rising" is that not true?
This graph misrepresents the rate the price declines and the length of time it has been stable for, which throws off nearly all non-trivial conclusions.
This is written by a financial company that is pouring billions into data centres. https://www.apollo.com/insights-news/pressreleases/2026/01/a... https://www.apollo.com/insights-news/pressreleases/2025/11/a... etc
So Apollo believes in the thesis strongly enough to put billions of its own capital behind it. That sounds more like putting their money where their mouth is than a rebuttal.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Shortage" means exactly that. It doesn't mean "there's no GPUs at all." In a gasoline shortage, prices go up and there are lines at the pump, but there are still cars on the road.
The lines at the pump only happened because of rationing rules, which led people to hoard and buy gas when they otherwise wouldn't have.
When gas prices went up in the 70s because of fuel shortage, smaller (more fuel efficient) cars became more popular to use less fuel to do the same thing. I wonder if the same will happen with compute, by making software more efficient, and do the same thing with less compute.
I bet everyone will soon use a thin client with 4GB of RAM, and all the compute happens in the cloud of some American corporation you pay subscription fees to.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"subsidizing" aka making 30% gross margin instead of 90%.
no, even if we assume their margins are 90% (they are not) they are still losing money because the $200 plans allow for tens of thousands of dollars worth of inference and a huge number of users are milking every cent across multiple accounts. Every “reset” OpenAI and Anthropic do is setting money on fire. If it were true that they’re making money hand over fist they wouldn’t need to raise tens of billions of dollars…
Many people designing these systems understand that there are vast shortages in almost all sectors in computing hardware. I'm more interested in AI strategy of a future where there's an oversupply. I speculate that by 2030 there will be both an overproduction in the factories that make these chips and a burgeoning second hand market of AI GPU's. The differences in the compute requirements for training versus inference of AI will explain the hindsight in oversupply.
I feel this post is blind to many of the secondary side effects of this "shortage". The rapid increase in prices and delivery times is having deleterious effects on all things tech - everything from phones to smart appliances and all sorts of gadgets has moved into unreachable price levels. Just imagine, if the rumours are true and Apple's 'foldable' phone costs 2500€ or more - who is going to buys this? So much of A…
I for one am going to buy Apple's foldable at the expected price between $2000-$2500. As long as they sell an iPhone 18 at a more accessible price point, I do not see the issue.