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Stargate Project: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX to build data centers

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Re: Stargate Project: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX to build data centers

#881

Post by Rebuff5007 »

Tangential, but this has gotten me thinking...

I used to wonder how the hundreds of thousands of employees that work in Big Oil or Big Pharma could tolerate all the terrible things their company does... e.g. the opioid epidemic. The naive optimist in me never thought that the tech industry would ever be that bad.

Now, as someone thats been in the industry for 10+ years and working adjacent to LLMs, this is all so depressing. The hype has gotten out of control. We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on things that simply are not making life better for the majority of people.

Re: Stargate Project: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX to build data centers

#882

Post by groby_b »

rchaud wrote: post #878
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private capital. That detail seems to derail your whole comment.

> “I think this will be the most important project of this era,” Altman said on Tuesday. “We wouldn’t be able to do this without you, Mr. President.” Since when does "private capital" speak in such honeyed tones to state powers? https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/21/tech/openai-oracle-softbank-t...

When you want to suck up, you want to suck up.

It's private money. CEOs will say whatever they need to say to achieve goals (here, favorable conditions for AI work), look at what the actual money flows say.

Re: Stargate Project: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX to build data centers

#883

Post by amazingamazing »

rchaud wrote: post #878
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private capital. That detail seems to derail your whole comment.

> “I think this will be the most important project of this era,” Altman said on Tuesday. “We wouldn’t be able to do this without you, Mr. President.” Since when does "private capital" speak in such honeyed tones to state powers? https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/21/tech/openai-oracle-softbank-t...

There's more to support than money.

Re: Stargate Project: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX to build data centers

#884

Post by [deleted] »

rchaud wrote: post #796

The US appears to be fully in the grips of centralized economic autarky. A tiny coterie of industrialists who have the President's ear decide how to allocate a gigantic amount of capital for their pet projects while the state raises tariffs and implements bans to protect them from competition. Didn't go well for South America in the 60s and 70s but perhaps, as economists are prone to saying, "this time will be differ…

[deleted]

Re: Stargate Project: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX to build data centers

#887

Post by ansible »

jhallenworld wrote: post #387
383toast wrote: post #208

Where are they getting the $500B? Softbank's market cap is 84b and their entire vision fund is only $100b, Oracle only has $11b cash on hand, OpenAI's only raised $17b total...

Oracle's cash on hand is presumably irrelevant- I think they are on the receiving end of the money, in return for servers. No wonder Larry Ellison was so fawning. Is this is a good investment by Softbank? Who knows.. they did invest in Uber, but also have many bad investments.

> `... they did invest in Uber, but also have many bad investments.`

The one I really don't get is that they funded Adam Neumann's new company after the collapse of WeWork. How stupid do you have to be to give that guy any more money?

Re: Stargate Project: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX to build data centers

#888

Post by Jarwain »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #602
serjester wrote: post #194

You have to keep in mind Microsoft is planning on spending almost 100B in datacenter capex this year and they're not alone. This is basically OpenAI matching the major cloud provider's spending. This could also be (at least partly) a reaction to Microsoft threatening to pull OpenAI's cloud credits last year. OpenAI wants to maintain independence and with compute accounting for 25–50% of their expenses (currently) [2]…

How is compute only 50% of their expenses?

I'd guess salaries and such for all the devs and researchers make up a significant portion of the other half

Re: Stargate Project: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX to build data centers

#889

Post by boredhedgehog »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #832
whimsicalism wrote: post #800

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is private capital. yes, we are in an era of big projects and big capital deployment. is that synonymous with centralized autarky? i don’t agree

Is this word being used correctly? au·tar·ky /ˈôˌtärkē/ noun economic independence or self-sufficiency. "rural community autarchy is a Utopian dream" a country, state, or society which is economically independent. plural noun: autarkies; plural noun: autarchies

But which word did he mean instead? It seems it should a synonym for "coterie".

Re: Stargate Project: SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX to build data centers

#890

Post by burnte »

Havoc wrote: post #396
burnte wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was literally my question. Is this basically just for more datacenters, NVidia chips, and electricity with a sprinkling of engineers to run it all? If so, then that $500bn should NOT be invested in today's tech, but instead in making more powerful and power efficient chips, IMO.

Add some nuclear power and you’ve suddenly got a big bill

Not really. Plant Vogtle in Georgia was way over budget and still was "only" $35bn. $500bn could get you 14 of those.
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