I wonder what we will do with all that compute if no one is going to use it...even if we achieve AGI it won't run on this generation of hardware. Are we just gonna brute force architectures or wtf is going on?
I assume there's at least one generation of re-sale value. There's a lot of smaller companies that could use GPU capacity and would if it was cheaper. I wonder how the math works out though -- are power requirements such that the actual costs aren't worth it? How long before the chips just get thrown away?
The good part is that the next financial crisis when OpenAI sinks probably won’t be a systemic one, it will definitely drag others down and the stock market will readjust, but hopefully the US economy will remain afloat
The bubble pops when Apple releases an iPhone that runs a good enough for most things LLM locally. At that point cloud hardware investments will plateau (unless some new GPU melting use case comes out). Investors will move from nvidia, AMD into Apple.
> As part of the arrangement, AMD issued a warrant that gives OpenAI the ability to buy up to 160 million shares of AMD for 1 cent each over the course of the chips deal. The warrant vests in tranches based on milestones that the two companies have agreed on.
This is money printing, just in the private sector. We know what happens when governments do it, and it's not good.
The title didn't make this obvious (at least not to me) but it's OpenAI that has the option to buy 10% of AMD. Not the other way around.
In case you're wondering how OpenAI could afford to buy 10% of AMD while they are hemorrhaging money -- the terms of the deal allows OpenAI to buy 160 million shares at 1 cents a share.
I could be thinking about this the wrong way but it appears that AMD is basically subsidizing the cost of the GPUs with equity.
I feel like I’m reading headlines from 1929. Surely everyone knows how fake and pyramid all these deals are but no one seems to care, they all think they will find a chair when the music stops.
It’s quite a good strategy to counteract the prevailing sense that “No one ever got fired for buying Nvidia GPUs”.
AMD just doesn’t know how to compete with Nvidia. The best it can do is charge 10% less and release GPUs about the same level of underwhelming performance as Nvidia.
Maybe they wouldn’t need to sell equity if they made better faster cheaper products than Nvidia.
But Lisa Su can’t bring herself to compete. Which is very strange because she brutally competed with and destroyed Intel.
The terms of some of these deals now are so completely bonkers it would be funny if it wasn’t so scary.
If someone was writing the script to “The Big Short 2” about the AI bubble they might struggle to come up with some of these things with a straight face.
Finance folks are salivating at the once in a generation opportunities ahead when this whole thing crumbles. CNBC seems to have at least one segment a day on “What’s your AI bubble burst play?”
When the bubble pops, the US' FTC will need to place limits on those circular deals like this.
Literally the whole big tech will melt. There are banks that are backing up certain GPU deals and those will be hit with billion losses as well.
Imagine once they have to depreciate those $1T+ of GPUs, data centers and the like that can't even be on resale for gaming.
Imagine when economic blocks like the EU and BRICs starts to reject more US software, when so much of those Big Tech revenues are made abroad. The recent geopolitics plays being a key factor.
Feels like we're living through a Michael Lewis book.
OpenAI estimate that it takes around $50bn to stand up a 1GW datacenter. This deal is 6GW worth of chips. Their projected revenues out to YE-2029 are $300bn. OpenAI will spend a decades worth of revenues building & filling the datacenters to house these chips, before accounting for their AI research, training, or inference spend.
I don't know why Bloomberg TV are asking where this money comes from for OpenAI. It comes from the AMD stock holders. If the AMD stock pumps then OpenAI gets free money to buy more, without giving up equity. If it doesn't then OpenAI just walk away.
Whatever some analyst say about medium term future of stock markets. I can't see this ending in any other way than very ugly. Or USD to become meaningless...
IMO underappreciated is that a big bump in the AMD stock price helps AMD a lot because it will help it attract talent. NVIDIA has a lot of very talented people with high standards and that’s a huge part of their success.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 65.2 ms ] threadThose GPU's will finally push pixels again :)
It's "seller financing" but to a degree we've never seen before in an industry (which create these "circular" effects).
There's a good HN thread from 2-days ago on this subject (200+ comments).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45473033
This is money printing, just in the private sector. We know what happens when governments do it, and it's not good.
In case you're wondering how OpenAI could afford to buy 10% of AMD while they are hemorrhaging money -- the terms of the deal allows OpenAI to buy 160 million shares at 1 cents a share.
I could be thinking about this the wrong way but it appears that AMD is basically subsidizing the cost of the GPUs with equity.
AMD just doesn’t know how to compete with Nvidia. The best it can do is charge 10% less and release GPUs about the same level of underwhelming performance as Nvidia.
Maybe they wouldn’t need to sell equity if they made better faster cheaper products than Nvidia.
But Lisa Su can’t bring herself to compete. Which is very strange because she brutally competed with and destroyed Intel.
If someone was writing the script to “The Big Short 2” about the AI bubble they might struggle to come up with some of these things with a straight face.
Finance folks are salivating at the once in a generation opportunities ahead when this whole thing crumbles. CNBC seems to have at least one segment a day on “What’s your AI bubble burst play?”
Literally the whole big tech will melt. There are banks that are backing up certain GPU deals and those will be hit with billion losses as well.
Imagine once they have to depreciate those $1T+ of GPUs, data centers and the like that can't even be on resale for gaming.
Imagine when economic blocks like the EU and BRICs starts to reject more US software, when so much of those Big Tech revenues are made abroad. The recent geopolitics plays being a key factor.
This looks really bad.
OpenAI estimate that it takes around $50bn to stand up a 1GW datacenter. This deal is 6GW worth of chips. Their projected revenues out to YE-2029 are $300bn. OpenAI will spend a decades worth of revenues building & filling the datacenters to house these chips, before accounting for their AI research, training, or inference spend.
Basically, AMD is giving up equity to buy its way into the AI market.
It's fantastic news, because OpenAI and AMD will now work together to develop decent software libraries for AI on AMD chips.
We all want an alternative to Nvidia and cuda. This partnership could deliver it in the not too distant future.
As a comparison of stocks over the last 5-years:
Today, AMD is up ~30% (which wipes the past year stock slump).So a healthy portion of AMD overall 5-years gain are just from this announcement today.
And OpenAI ($0.50T) is currently valued more than AMD ($0.35T) itself.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NVDA/
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AMD/
It was inevitable, this basically marks the end of affordable gaming GPUs, upgrade while you still can