Comment by rjh29
6 hours ago
They already invested in the massive datacentres of GPUs sitting idle. They have fewer users so they can deliver more inference per user - more thinking, larger models.
6 hours ago
They already invested in the massive datacentres of GPUs sitting idle. They have fewer users so they can deliver more inference per user - more thinking, larger models.
Don't they just rent them out to the frontier AI shops? They're not sitting idle.
So where are these mythical savings coming from? You're saying they have spent more per user therefore can charge each user less or something? I'm not following.
The (optimistic?) take is that xAI is genuinely better at building datacenters at scale than anyone else, and the freedom to use Nat Gas as the primary energy source allows them to have lower marginal costs.
The (pessimistic?) take is that they have loads of idle GPUs and want to get some revenue out of them rather than none. Compare this to OpenAI/Anthropic where every token used by a consumer has to compete with enterprise spenders, and there’s not enough to go around for everyone.
It’s basically a clearance sale, is the theory.