If you owe the bank a million dollars you have a problem. If you owe the bank a billion dollars the bank has a problem.

The same logic applies here.

Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Broadcom, Nvidia, SpaceX and others are spending hundreds of billions a year each on fast-depreciating infrastructure to serve this potential AI demand. If the demand never materializes then they know they are in big trouble. So they have every incentive in the world to prop up Anthropic (and OpenAI) and keep the party going.

Can they keep the bubble inflated indefinitely? Probably not, but all these companies combined have heck of a lot more influence than Anthropic alone.

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bretpiatt a day ago | parent [-]

They aren't "fast-depreciating infrastructure" -- research shared by a16z team, rental rates are up across the board, even for GPUs that are 5+ years old. The demand is real right now. The proverbial tide could go out but we aren't seeing it yet.

Source: https://x.com/a16z/status/2113986385908842870

"Zooming out, GPUs are still renting ahead of a standard 6-year depreciation schedule

Rental price vs. schedule: - H200: +143% - B200: +111% - RTX PRO 6000: +73% - H100: +54% - A100: +9%

Most of the gap opened up after April, when token demand took off"

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epistasis a day ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah the fab shortage is really keeping lifetimes long, far longer than in the past.

I've brought my old GTX 1070 out of retirement for for some molecular dynamics these days because its "free" except for eh electricity and have Ben pleasantly surprised at what it can get done chugging along in the background. I'm considering buying some more, as it's kind of a steal in pricing.

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paxy a day ago | parent | prev [-]

That’s because of current supply shortage, not inherent value. Is there any reason to believe that when fabs can sufficiently scale up production these GPUs will continue to be valued like gold and not something you hold on to for a couple years and then toss in the bin for a newer faster model – aka how computer hardware economics have worked for the last 50 years?

	▲	epistasis a day ago \| parent [-]
		A supply shortage reveals the inherent value. A supply abundance reveals the inherent cost.