Since Cursor often relies on Claude models, some of those services will flow back to their own datacenter compute. Especially if there's, lets call it, "customer demand loadbalancing optimization agreements" that makes those Cursor services prioritize Claude models using the app keys that get load-balanced onto the SpaceX datacenter.
Did SpaceX just spend $10B to rent out its own datacenter, juicing their recurring revenue metrics with their own AI services investment?
With Anthropic's help. And when it's time for Anthropic to hype their IPO maybe SpaceX will return the favour and offer some deal that looks great to retail investors.
I don't think it's the conspiracy theory that you're making it out to be.
It is publicly known that the vast majority of deals in the AI space are circular in nature without the need for explicitly encoding any of it in a legal contract or even tacit agreements.
e.g. Nvidia has invested significantly in many AI companies including both Anthropic and OpenAI which rely heavily on Nvidia's hardware and will undoubtedly use some of said investment towards that end.
Nvidia and Oracle are already public companies, they're just aiming for their next quarterly statements.
SpaceX is getting dressed for their debutante ball and is putting on the makeup to make a grand entrance on the auction floor.
Is there a difference? I legitimately have no idea. You are right that we can add another entry to the list of interconnected circular dealmakings. All this ain't gonna end well next time the music stops playing.
Your argument is that since it is common in a bubble to make circular deals, there is no conspiracy. But you seem to suggest that people committing tens of billions of dollars aren’t looking any further down the pipeline than the name on the receiving bank account? Have you ever been anywhere near a large deal?
That's a lot to imply from my simple comment. My viewpoint is actually the exact opposite of what you claim: it all feels like a house of cards that is set to collapse at any moment. I can also tell you're quite passionate about this and I wonder if that emotion is clouding your interpretation of what was meant to be an innocuous comment.
My point was that there is a lot of this happening, it is not a unique statement nor is it surprising to see at this point.
I made no attempt to dismiss or justify any of it.
Sure, if "pretty smart" means overinvest in capital spending on an dirty datacenter powered by unpermitted gas generators that you don't even need anymore because of lack of demand for your product, so you lease it to a competitor (presumably at a huge loss). I am not sure that "major source of revenue" as a datacenter provider is the kind of growth opportunity that IPO investors are looking for.
Anthropic doesn't has that much pressure to pay while Musk has an IPO coming up and he wants to cleanup his numbers.
Its also not a good sign because he should be able to leverage Grok, his billion dollar investment, instead of renting it out to Anthropic. But hey what does it matter to investor? if the IPO explodes, it is clear that people either can't read, don't care or don't understand.
Says who? Oracle spends a lot of money to get ready for AI customers like OpenAI. They aren't there yet. They can't lose money serving what they don't have.
Its not even that. Its better to be involved in the game with a leader/help out a competitor who is competing against someone you don't like and don't want them to win, than to sit it out.
Are you worried about Google too? They're selling compute. Same with Microsoft, and Amazon. As far as I know Anthropic is really the only one that's compute-bound.
> As far as I know Anthropic is really the only one that's compute-bound.
I use gemini models daily. Jetbrains tells me when they are overloaded and switches to alternative (usually to openai which turns everything to shit). I'd say happens about fortnightly.
It's a good litmus and forecaster for AI demand and I wish we had more visibility.
Amazon is a bookseller and Google is just a web indexer. GCP didn't even open it's preview until 2008. Not sure why you think a business model is in any way a static thing.
Amazon is a compute specialist, their competitive advantage is in the compute business. And conversely they're not really trying to play in the AI business, so it's not at all suspicious that they don't want to use all their compute themselves.
It was pretty obvious to me that the merger was a way of quietly shutting xAI down in a way that keeps investors happy. With it also being used as a vehicle to offload the Twitter debt to the public, he certainly has good accountants.
Yep - and in the meantime it's an asset of SpaceX to boost their IPO price, as long as this is done before people realize that xAI is apparently becoming a datacenter company not an AI one.
Then you've got SpaceX buying 1200 cybertrucks from Tesla, so it's serving as failure laundering vehicle for all his endeavors.
> it's serving as failure laundering vehicle for all his endeavors.
Which would be fine to me if Tesla wasn't a publicly traded company and SpaceX wasn't about to IPO. Whereas juicing companies in a way that affects the open stock market feels very inappropriate.
I didn't say he's failing at everything - SpaceX certainly seems a huge success. Telsa had been doing well, although sales are now declining fast, and the Cybertruck has been a failure. He massively overpaid for Twitter, ruined the site, then got X.ai to bail him out. X.ai seems like a failure - evidentially not enough demand to utilize the data center he built for it, and when have you seen anyone say they use Grok for anything ?
And now SpaceX investors are going to be left as the bag holders for X.ai/Twitter.
It is always so odd seeing how many internet people consider any new attempt that doesn't go immediately viral with success as a bad mark on someone's character.
If you're not able to see a whole slew of "bad marks" on Musk's character, then you haven't been paying much attention. It's not either/or - you can be be successful in some areas while being a childish twit and moron in others.
I think I've just seen many more fake/exaggerated "bad marks" than real ones so I've become bitter. He's definitely not been perfect, but the areas I see flaws (he can be extremely rude, some drug abuse, doesn't treat close/loved ones well, seems to lash out when getting too close to someone, can be very Ego driven and doesn't admit it until it's too late, constantly needs to be at war with someone) are always just passed over for "He's a LiTErAL NAzI" and "He is HOARDING all the MonEY because he's SO GreedY"- which are just so demonstrably false.
Overall though, to classify the work he's done and the impact on the world as unsuccessful is just insane. It's almost always from someone who hasn't even managed to lead a team of 10 through one project too.
Yeah his luck is annoying. But he stoped having any character and ethics. He literaly was with his Tesla in front of the White House and bought himself a seat next to a Clown.
But he also plays in areas were market disruption can't be done by many people at all.
But look Tesla: He did the cybertruck debakel. He tanked Tesla as a brand, he is burning money on xAI and Twitter, he destroyed a beloved brand Twitter. He did the boring company garbage.
The only thing this shows is some kind of masterclass between manipulation, public ignorance, luck, economy of high invest high risk and risk adverse industries.
Starlink doesn't scale very well which is a low margin business, especially when Amazon and the others are joining the club.
xAI is just a loss.
Twitter probably still a loss.
Tesla made a lot of money with co2 certificates. And a market were people were quite ignorant for a long.
Space-X he wants to push that to the death, without a real endplan. He now talks about Mars and Datacenter in space like there is any real business up their.
Why would they spend 10B and potentially 60B in cursor if they were to shut xAI down? And I'm pretty sure Elon wants to have a model of his own, even if weaker, so it's "not woke".
Yeah it's corporate subprime. Bundle a load of overpriced "assets" with made up valuations into something that's actually valuable, then shove it on the public markets so everyone has to buy it in their index trackers.
Plot twist but makes perfect sense for both companies.
Anthropic gets the compute they so desperately need to keep growing. Elon rents out compute that xAI couldn't make use of due to little demand for Grok. SpaceX gets revenue on the books for IPO.
PS. I want to translate this part:
We’re very intentional about where we’ll add capacity—partnering with democratic countries whose legal and regulatory frameworks support investments of this scale
To real speak:
We're putting profits above anything else. Yes, Elon is a far right guy who supported Trump, a president who isn't very democratic, but we're just really desperate for more money. We're also trying to make you forget that xAI is funded by Middle East non-democratic governments. Heck, we'll even buy compute from China if we can sell Anthropic models there.
>we'll even buy compute from China if we can sell Anthropic models there.
Considering that Anthropic mass-bans Chinese users accounts based on using VPN (used to circumvent the Chinese firewall) and then demands an ID or a residence permit of a country where Claude officially works to ensure that the user doesn't live in China, seems unlikely.
If the Chinese government tells Anthropic they can freely sell Claude in China, Dario is suddenly going to be kissing China's ass instead of saying how we can't let China win the AGI race for democracy and western values.
They told the US government no on using Claude for approving lethal military strikes.
China can get plenty of value from Claude without needing to use it for anything similar.
They very specifically avoided a trap where the next time the US blows up a school full of children they were very obviously going to blame Claude for it.
While I agree with the sentiment, $200 Million is really not a big contract for Anthropic when they're on $44 Billion annual revenue. It's less than half a percent.
> funded by Middle East non-democratic governments
What's the problem here exactly? Are you insinuating any non-democratic government is bad and evil and only democratic governments are the correct and right way to govern? sort of like: "there is only one true prophet, and it's the one I follow, and all the others are false!"
Anthropic brought up the "democratic" justification, not GP. GP was just pointing out that Anthropic doesn't actually care. If it can get a sweetheart deal from an autocrat, it'll take it.
But assuming there are people that care, if a government doesn't derive its right to govern from the will of the people it governs, under what definitions can it be considered legitimate? Divine right of kings?
Yes, especially in the context of supporting US imperialism and capitalists interests (perpetual war + extraction machine) over what would actually benefit Americans: peace + cooperation initiatives. Something also tells me that American civilians would rather cooperate with peaceful governments than those that feed the blood machine.
America could do so much to compel the world to work in from a human rights perspective rather than petrodollars. I can't imagine any serious person would say the average American benefits from US imperialism. All US politicians did was traded away were secure middle class lifestyle for cheaper widgets, hardly anything worth caring about.
Who benefits from American petrodollar policies? Not Americans, all the wealth gets extracted to the elites while civilians suffer from the imperial blowback/boomerang.
Look at what the new deal coalition brought in and they nearly burnt out enough to allow neoliberalism to flourish during their fall. What do we have in return? No universal healthcare, no universal childcare, a broken welfare system, increasing income inequality, losing the ability to make a better life.
IDK what world you're living in, but in the real world Americans are the richest people on earth and richer than ever before in real terms. And yes international seigniorage is part of that.
Urban/industrial and refinery complex; not at all rural. Located about 8 miles southwest of downtown Memphis (3231 Paul Lowery Rd) on a bend of the river.
