From the article:
> I put in one, and a hundred comes back.”
> The figure was rhetorical, not a disclosed 100-times investment return.
There's a lot more words in there, but it doesn't seem to say anything else.
We're already seeing signs of this strategy from Open AI and Anthropic warning about the dangers of AI and the need for safety regulations. None of that stuff matters if China is not also on board with it.
You could say that about any historically inflated valuation all the way back to the tulip mania. Either the expected profit materializes or it doesn't.
> We're already seeing signs of this strategy from Open AI and Anthropic warning about the dangers of AI and the need for safety regulations
I would read this as a desire to pause training to be able to present a profit in anticipation of the IPO. The major AI labs mad scramble to IPO is if anything a sign that they aren't at all confident in the valuation. If they were they would be no hurry to cash out.
Its a mighty fine deal for Nvidia
No, it's very unlikely at this point every $1 Nvidia invests brings back $100. Stating something like that is almost a red flag that things are overheating.
seems no one is reading the article..
My name is Charles Ponzi and I approve of this message.
We are not at the top of this trend yet so I do not see this as over investment.
I remember the criticism Microsoft got for investing in Facebook/Meta that gave them a whooping $15B valuation and getting 1.7% in 2007. Not all deals will turn out that prescient but a few will and make up for any duds. This is a real market.
No, it's a high risk gamble.
If the market grows enough they will win the bet, but if the market doesn't or we get a recession that dries up capital they will be holding the bag.
Even in a recession I think the shift towards AI would just accelerate since it is usually cheaper than humans.
The real risk I feel if what if AI is too successful and there is a lack of human demand because of dropping wages/employment?
(Then I wonder if sentient robot demand will make up for it? Although I realize that veers into science fiction futures.)
So for this to become true there are some number of jobs that that pay $N salary are replaced completely by LLMs that do the job for $N-0.01?
Is that what you mean by "market grows enough"
Yes, it seems very possible to me that Nvidia makes a lot of money. They are literally the largest company in the world.
Who pays? Only all the companies, desperately raising as much capital as possible, issuing new stock to do it, going for unprecedented investment rounds, burning cash reserves to fund the largest data centre rollout in history.
Who builds the things that go into said datacenters? The thing that has also raised in price dramatically in recent years?
From sub million to hundreds of millions I could theoretically see. Even tens of millions to billions. And even then I would be extremely skeptical.
But with Nvidia we are talking somewhere in the scale at tens or hundreds of billions. And that is actually very large sums of money. Even if it often does not look like it.
Nvidia's financing is disclosed. Enron lied about its schemes. I've also seen zero evidence that Nvidia is extending this credit to related parties to put in sham orders–that was part of Enron's shtick, too.
It’s not circular because we put a little bit of money in, and a lot of money comes back
As I understand it they are risking that even if the major AI labs fail all the compute capacity that's been built out will remain in demand at sufficiently high prices.
So for example if you invest $100 in a farm and get a return of 10%, where does that come from? The nutrients in the soil, the effort expended by the workers, and the power of the sun to turn seeds into food. All value comes either from finite resources in the ground (nuclear, oil, ...), from solar power, or from human effort (work, innovations, etc.)
So can you trace back Nvidia's incredible 10000% return on investment to any of these sources? Which ones?
If this isn't a house of cards, AI companies' customers. The companies and individauls ponying up for a Claude subscription or compute through OpenRouter.
Customer financing isn't inherently fucked. It's just highly suspect at the scale Nvidia's doing it. There was another thread where I noted that Nvidia's investments are literally monetarily significant, to the point that I expect them to start being directly referenced in the Fed's beige book [1].
Companies who pay 99$ to make >99$ in return. I am not saying it works in all cases but that's the idea when you pay for stuff as a Company.
> Because it seems like so far everybody is losing money with no reversal of this trend in sight
I am not sure what you are seeing. Anthropic (as one of only two major companies that do just AI) is starting to return profits, while demand for AI is accelerating and, clearly, compute is maxed out. And I mean: On the entire planet. They are turning profits despite being in full buildout mode.
You, when their circular financing scheme fails and you're the one left holding the bag as your government says "they're too important to let them fail".
alexdns•50m ago
david-gpu•39m ago