I think that's the datacenter with the gas turbine generators that operate without permits because they're "portable." Data centers have tremendous externalities but colossus is a particularly nasty offender, and not just due its size.
Yup, and now Anthropic is complicit in the environmental damage and health problems for local residents that these data centers are causing.
But hey, number must go up, right?
idle_zealot 6 minutes ago [-]
Have you considered that the march of progress requires human blood to grease the gears and mulched skulls to pave the (highly efficient) road? Really, when you take into account all of the future lives this will improve and save it's difficult to claim any cost now is too high. Would you stand in their way and delay the day that Mythos cures cancer?
This is a joke. Read it in a mocking tone.
LogicFailsMe 1 minutes ago [-]
I'm not saying human blood and mulched skulls are a renewable source of power, I'm just saying. Or maybe they can partner with SoulCycle to power computation with 24/7 spin classes?
Johnny_Bonk 2 minutes ago [-]
I loled
urams 28 minutes ago [-]
Very possible Elon is doing this to make give Anthropic better chances against OAI while he attempts to reshape xAI.
Also possible he sees infra as the future of xAI if he really believes in the value of space compute.
Hard to see this any of this as anything other than a bearish sign for Grok though.
alienreborn 38 minutes ago [-]
Why is xAI giving up their advantage? Is this a signal that their frontier model improvements are plateauing and decided there is no value in hoarding all their compute?
dktp 10 minutes ago [-]
I would guess it's purely because Grok isn't nearly in-demand enough to produce meaningful revenue. And they want to juice the numbers for IPO
And I'm sure it's a bonus point for Musk that it goes to OpenAI's most relevant competitor
SoKamil 29 minutes ago [-]
As weird as it seems I think this is Musk’s best shot at winning over Altman. He has personal vendetta.
tw04 35 minutes ago [-]
What advantage? Has there ever been any indication they’re leading in any segment? Sure Elon has thrown a bunch of money at hardware, but to what end?
And frankly as bad as Altman is from a: if AI is really going to disrupt humanity do I want this guy in charge? Elon is 10x worse. So why would the best and the brightest ever work for him?
abraxas 14 minutes ago [-]
No other LLM has made as much child porn as grok so there is that...
eightysixfour 31 minutes ago [-]
In a compute starved world, big ass data centers are an advantage.
loktarogar 15 minutes ago [-]
yes, but it's only advantage if one is compute-strained and the other isn't. if they both have lots then there's no advantage. if one doesn't fully utilise their compute then it's not an advantage either
eightysixfour 9 minutes ago [-]
Well, it appears all their competitors are compute starved so…
8note 14 minutes ago [-]
can you elucidate what that advantage is, that isnt renting it out for the highest price to somebody that really needs it?
root_axis 2 minutes ago [-]
Training a model that is larger than your competitor's.
eightysixfour 9 minutes ago [-]
Well, other than your ability to turn that into cash by renting it out for the highest price to someone who needs it, you can promise prospective employees that are supposed to use that infra to train models that they won’t be compute starved.
You can kick off more model training runs and experiments than your competitors.
You can kick off a $1-2t IPO claiming you are going to capture a large portion of the largest TAM the world has ever seen.
Computer0 8 minutes ago [-]
When did xAI have an advantage?
aurareturn 4 hours ago [-]
More signs that xAI might be giving up on the AGI race. xAI let Cursor train a model on Colossus 2, gave the entire Colossus1 to Anthropic, and is now giving compute in Colossus2 to Anthropic as well.
papascrubs 2 hours ago [-]
Elon lost his lawsuit with openAI and knows xAI isn't on the same trajectory. Might as well try to win the bet and flip off Sam by supporting the best competition. Also they are getting a head start on AI as a commodity. I'm sure there's plenty of money to be made for those that can leverage their capital to essentially rent capacity right now. If he's not making enough off of grok, might as well cover their expenses.
paxys 1 hours ago [-]
It was kinda obvious when SpaceX "acquired" it. Elon rewarded xAI investors/prevented lawsuits by giving them SpaceX equity, and that was that.
jgalt212 13 minutes ago [-]
Too bad Enron is still not around. They'd have some real fun with today's electrical markets.
amazingamazing 43 minutes ago [-]
I don't see a scenario where it really makes sense to be a frontier lab long term. Eventually model quality will plateau then you distill and get 90% for 10% or less cost.
hungryhobbit 36 minutes ago [-]
General AI is that scenario. The investor dream is that their horse hits general AI first, patents it (or otherwise somehow stops the competition from hitting it), and then reaps the massive benefits.
I'm not saying it's a likely scenario, but I genuinely believe a big percentage of AI investment revolves around that (or similar) scenarios.
twoodfin 39 minutes ago [-]
Over the past 6 months, Anthropic has made more waves as a product company than a frontier lab.
amazingamazing 24 minutes ago [-]
Cant wait to see their books once they IPO
fasbg1 1 hours ago [-]
I though Claude is too woke. Musk has posted that at least 50 times in the last year.
But booking outrageous rental fees as fake AI revenue ahead of the SpaceX IPO apparently takes precedence.
0xy 51 minutes ago [-]
Anthropic is paying real cash, how is it fake revenue?
123aad 41 minutes ago [-]
Fake __AI__ revenue. Maybe Hetzner should build Colossus4, rent it out and book it as AI revenue instead of hardware rental revenue and get a P/E of 100.
nikcub 28 minutes ago [-]
Anthropic this quarter will have revenue of $10.9B, up from $4.8B last quarter[0]. They're paying SpaceX $1.25B per month for compute[1] - which is more than what SpaceX earn on space. SpaceX spent about $30-40B in capex on Colossus 1 & 2.
This is all real revenue, real spend, real usage.
Hetzner just aren't at this scale. Not even close. If they wanted to get into this business - first, they're late. Second, it's at a scale of ~10x of their total lifetime datacenter buildout. Third, they'd need to change their business to being one that is debt fronted.
xAI have proven out that being able to deploy compute is a very viable business (and difficult to pull off)
At some point AI cynicism clashes with reality, it must be exhausting maintaining it.
Jesus Christ, the Hetzner example is obviously an example of booking revenue as AI revenue (where investors assume it is generated by Grok subscriptions) vs. hardware rental revenue, which traditionally not valued as highly.
Nowhere does the hypothetical state that Hetzner, an example for hardware rental, has the funding or the capabilities to execute the sarcastic example.
But ok, now hardware rentals have a P/E of 100 or more.
jgalt212 10 minutes ago [-]
I think you're low at 100. TSLA has 370 PE, and SpaceX is targeting 250+.
tptacek 36 minutes ago [-]
If Hetzner could build that, they would.
tmp10423288442 59 minutes ago [-]
The eternal truth: money talks, bullshit walks
thelastgallon 54 minutes ago [-]
Musk will buy Anthropic and fix the wokeness. It was done before.
Edit: They did it with Colossus and now they're doing the exact same thing with Colossus2. https://www.selc.org/news/xai-built-an-illegal-power-plant-t...
But hey, number must go up, right?
This is a joke. Read it in a mocking tone.
Also possible he sees infra as the future of xAI if he really believes in the value of space compute.
Hard to see this any of this as anything other than a bearish sign for Grok though.
And I'm sure it's a bonus point for Musk that it goes to OpenAI's most relevant competitor
And frankly as bad as Altman is from a: if AI is really going to disrupt humanity do I want this guy in charge? Elon is 10x worse. So why would the best and the brightest ever work for him?
You can kick off more model training runs and experiments than your competitors.
You can kick off a $1-2t IPO claiming you are going to capture a large portion of the largest TAM the world has ever seen.
I'm not saying it's a likely scenario, but I genuinely believe a big percentage of AI investment revolves around that (or similar) scenarios.
But booking outrageous rental fees as fake AI revenue ahead of the SpaceX IPO apparently takes precedence.
This is all real revenue, real spend, real usage.
Hetzner just aren't at this scale. Not even close. If they wanted to get into this business - first, they're late. Second, it's at a scale of ~10x of their total lifetime datacenter buildout. Third, they'd need to change their business to being one that is debt fronted.
xAI have proven out that being able to deploy compute is a very viable business (and difficult to pull off)
At some point AI cynicism clashes with reality, it must be exhausting maintaining it.
[0] https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/mind-blowing-growth-is-about-to-...
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/spacex-ipo-anthropic-compute-fin...
Nowhere does the hypothetical state that Hetzner, an example for hardware rental, has the funding or the capabilities to execute the sarcastic example.
But ok, now hardware rentals have a P/E of 100 or more.