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How OpenAI uses complex and circular deals to fuel its multibillion-dollar rise

(www.nytimes.com)
387 points reaperducer | 3 comments | 31 Oct 25 13:03 UTC | HN request time: 0.686s | source
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SubiculumCode ◴[31 Oct 25 14:14 UTC] No.45772210[source]▶
Given that AI is a national security matter now, I'd expect the U.S.A to step in and rescue certain companies in the event of a crash. However, I'd give higher chances to NVIDIA than OpenAI. Weights are easily transferrable and the expertise is in the engineers, but ability to continue making advanced chips is not as easily transferred.
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embedding-shape ◴[31 Oct 25 14:16 UTC] No.45772241[source]▶
Why is ML knowledge "in the engineers" while chip manufacturing apparently sits in the company/hardware/something else than the engineers/humans?
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bob1029 ◴[31 Oct 25 14:29 UTC] No.45772355[source]▶
One person can implement a transformer model from scratch in a weekend. Hardware is not the valuable part of machine learning. Data and how it is used are.

The "magic of AI" doesn't live inside an Nvidia GPU. There are billions of dollars of marketing being deployed to convince you it does. As soon as the market realizes that nvidia != magic AI box, the music should stop pretty quickly.

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1. tehjoker ◴[31 Oct 25 14:35 UTC] No.45772397[source]▶
That's true, but without the kind of horsepower provided by modern hardware, even though I'm skeptical that it's all needed, especially given DeepSeek's amazing results, AI would be nearly impossible.

There are some important innovations on the algorithm / network structure side, but all these ideas are only able to be tried because the hardware supports it. This stuff has been around for decades.

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2. chermi ◴[31 Oct 25 15:05 UTC] No.45772790[source]▶
Deepseek required existing models that required the horsepower.
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3. tehjoker ◴[31 Oct 25 21:43 UTC] No.45777027[source]▶
That was claimed but never proven. I personally don't believe the American companies making this claim. I suspect they made this up to protect their valuations when they were hideously embarassed and lost a trillion dollars in equity.