You can’t buy gpus at reasonable prices because US frontier labs are spending nearly a trillion dollars this year on data center buildout, not because some mid tier European insurance co needs to serve deepseek

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jacquesm 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes, well, you're wrong about that. They're buying GPUs by the pallet here.

Mid tier insurance co is working with local inference providers and some of these now have thousands of GPUs up and running. Don't drink the HN cool aid that the EU is a backwater where nothing happens too much or you'll end up surprised one day.

The one thing where Europe really does lag is in training, that would be fair. But inference providers are popping out of the ground like mushrooms and there are some billion euro+ projects underway. We -unfortunately- also have some scammers that are bilking (or attempting to bilk) investors pretending they have more than they do, this is annoying but I would expect that other countries have similar players as well.

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senordevnyc 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Wow, whole pallets!?

There are roughly 70 GW of datacenters under construction in the US right now, and a GW is roughly 500k GPUs, so 35 million GPUs.

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jacquesm an hour ago | parent [-]

The 'by the pallet' buys are for small local projects, not data center size projects (of which we have more than a couple as well), as you probably already knew. This isn't some silly dick measuring contest.

The point was: they're buying them from the retail channels in relatively high volume because there is a massive shortage of GPUs in general, but that does not seem to stop parties with smaller projects who do not qualify for buying directly from NV (assuming NV even has stock to sell).

5090's now sell for the same amount (or more) that you could buy an RTX 6000 for a few months ago, and RTX 6000's are ~19K and up.

I found a stash somewhere, bought two, then two more and when I was ready to buy the remainder they were all gone. Serves me right for being too careful.

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senordevnyc an hour ago | parent [-]

No, the point is that US demand is what's driving up GPU prices, as GP asserted. Europe's purchases are a rounding error. And even then, most of the data centers under construction in the EU are from American companies.

	▲	LunaSea 10 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The US has never cancelled as many data center projects as now.
	▲	jacquesm an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		A rounding error is taken to be sub 1%. Anyway, I shouldn't engage, good luck.

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benjiro29 12 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You can’t buy gpus at reasonable prices because US frontier labs are spending nearly a trillion dollars this year on data center build

Its not just the US ... Where do you think all those 5090's end up? Its just crypto mining all over again. Most people do not realize that China was the biggest crypto mining operation because of its cheap electricity and people willingness to take big risks.

The same happens now also, with people buying up 5090's (and lower class cards) in bulk, to strap into AI rigs. With Nvidia discontinuing the 32GB 5090s, we already see pressure on the lower end cards that had a better price / performance for a while now.

China will do China things *lol* ... People there are just more willing to take bigger gambles (and the cheap elec helps a ton). But that is also a factor why a lot of consumer level hardware gets under pressure. Its not just the supply chain to the enterprise market that is eating a lot for AI.

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geraneum an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> US frontier labs are spending nearly a trillion dollars this year

They are not, not even close. I wonder if you're aware how money is being "spent" between Nvidia and US AI corporations!