Similar to what others noted earlier I'm having trouble understanding exactly what you're trying to communicate here. I'll respond based to points I am clear on.

Selling a customer a contract for on-premises computing and giving them a fake metal box and SaaS is borderline unethical depending on the terms of said contract. I understand the sentiment of that point though. There are many reasons a customer chooses to own instead of rent. Legal requirements, financial incentives, and even control over performance to name a few.

On-premises computing was so good that the cloud providers packaged it up and sold it back to people at a premium that could only ever be rented. The finances of that model don't make sense to many businesses as they look to reignite their on-premises computing with the modernity of the cloud providers. That's where Oxide shines in my opinion- being able to have on-premises computing that combines the efficiencies of the hyper scalers with an API-driven approach to managing resources. We take that a step further by building hardware and software in-house for additional benefits such as power efficiency, control over the networking stack, additional telemetry, etc.

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doctorpangloss 3 days ago | parent [-]

there's seriously nothing complicated about this. Define ownership. Who cares about owning a bunch of computers? If you can get the compute, and you pay up front for it once, and then you can sell "it" later, and it's cheaper than renting, what does it matter if the compute comes in the form of a physical box or if it is in the cloud? So these are all things that matter about ownership! To me, occupying a physical space is not important for ownership, wrt servers.

Nobody is saying anything about anything unethical... I am mocking the idea of needing the steel box, forget about the steel box.

It's just Amazon Reserved Instances, but with an indefinite period. Okay? Isn't that an attractive product?

Why am I talking about banks? Because maybe in Oxide's deck it says, "Amazon will NEVER do this. Amazon will NEVER sell indefinite reserved instances." Fine. Well a bank can simply pay spot prices and sell you an up front price, if you want. Okay? It's the same thing. It only matters what Amazon does when we're talking about $100m Series B, which is what this article is about! It's not about the technology.

> On-premises computing was so good that the cloud providers packaged it up and sold it back to people at a premium that could only ever be rented.

No... guys... AWS makes sense. It's not a premium "that could only ever be rented." There are a ton of much cheaper cloud providers. Amazon just happens to be selling the Rolls Royce of clouds. They have a ridiculous margin. Figma makes more profit for AWS each year than it will ever make for itself in its entire lifetime. "that could only ever be rented" is simply not true, they can afford to make all sorts of innovative pricing models, reserved instances being one of them.

Oxide just hasn't had to compete with "99 Year AWS Reserved Instances." But absolutely, positively, utterly nothing stops them from offering that. They already give you a massive, MASSIVE discount for 3 year reservations.

That said, obviously not having to deal with human beings managing hardware is valuable. It's the same shit as the difference between "AI" meaning a computer and overseas workforces. They might produce the same outputs for the same cost, but think deeply about yourself: how much are you willing to pay to deal with a computer instead of an IT tech? To avoid phone calls? To avoid doing things that might be faster, but are in person?

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kev009 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

You are casually transitioning between something that is pretty well understood through the history of online commercial computing (i.e. 1970s): 1) owned hardware versus leased/timeshared/rented hardware or services and 2) concepts of financial instruments that many readers here are probably not intimately familiar with.

If I needed a generator to run a remote mining operation, and you just told me to just buy energy futures instead, we'd be having a silly discussion. Whether it makes sense for me to rent or buy the generator has more to do with governments, [,tax ]laws, and risks that ultimately manifest as cashflow decisions. You have some valid thread you are pulling on for what are the economics of general purpose compute and to whom, but your argument needs a lot more care to carefully define and make your case and why it is okay to dismiss the outlier cases for instance.

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steveklabnik 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> If I needed a generator to run a remote mining operation, and you just told me to just buy energy futures instead, we'd be having a silly discussion.

Exactly. Just because they are similar in some senses doesn't mean that they're fungible. Generator manufacturers still have a business even though you can purchase energy futures.

	▲	doctorpangloss 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		okay well this is an interesting and engaging conversation, if you guys someday make something in the $1,000 range you have a customer.

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doctorpangloss 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It would be like if you needed to buy a generator versus, I will give you a giant cable that has all the same economics as buying a generator. In that case yeah, if I am giving you all the same economics as buying your own generator, but cheaper, you would be stupid not to take my deal. It’s got nothing to do with energy futures. My suggestion is to copy what I am saying to a chatbot, and ask it what “looks like a duck, quacks like a duck” means, and what’s going on here.

	▲	kev009 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		"giant cable" -- this kind of thing does obviously happen, rural electrification is heavily subsidized by governments (see the rest of my comment..). But it is also not a realistic option in plenty of cases as such and therefore industrial companies like Cat and Cummins are happy to sell multi-million dollar generators. If your approach to the subject is to copy it into a chatbot it might explain why this discussion is ultimately specious, because a casual and even jocular approach to this is not really adequate to make any point.

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mustyoshi 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm not part of Oxide, but I think you're assuming everyone is okay with not controlling the hardware they run on.

There is plenty of addressable market where a public cloud or even a colocation of hardware doesn't make sense for whatever bespoke reason.

I don't think their target customer is startups, and that's okay. You likely aren't their target customer. But they've identified a customer profile, and want to provide a hardware + software experience that hasn't been available to that customer before.

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ShroudedNight 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's not clear to me that the counter-party risk is _remotely_ similar between the two offerings. Someone reselling indefinite access to AWS could relatively easily set things up to go "poof" after a few years, whereas if it's your box, that's not possible. Now, critical components of the box could croak, and someone could still be screwed, but even there, you likely have more options for support than just paying Amazon's ransom.

	▲	doctorpangloss 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		yeah... AWS isn't going to set up anything to go poof, Oxide, despite making something awesome, will go poof if it charges too little money for it. Amazon is expensive but not that expensive.

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esseph 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Oxide is selling a technical solution to technical customers with ownership needs or desires for security, regulatory, or other reasons. Access to the complete stack source code is another. I know a bajillion of these customers and they all have very, very deep pocket books.

They are specifically going after features in a way that no other vendor is, with an extreme care of execution of their crafts at the highest level.

The problems oxide is solving for these customers is something Amazon has shown no interest in. Could they? Sure, they could do anything they put their pocket books to doing, but they haven't.