So, Project Stargate. Is it real, or is it another “Sam Altman wants $7 trillion”? Some points:
The USG invested nothing in it. Some news outlets are being misleading about this. Trump just stood next to them and looked pretty, maybe indicated he’d cut some red tape. It is not an “AI Manhattan Project”, at least, as of now.
Elon Musk claims that they don’t have the money and that SoftBank (stated to have “financial responsibility” in the announcement) has less than $10 billion secured. If true, while this doesn’t mean they can’t secure an order of magnitude more by tomorrow, this does directly clash with “deploying $100 billion immediately” statement.
But Sam Altman counters that Musk’s statement is “wrong”, as Musk “surely knows”.
I… don’t know which claim I distrust more. Hm, I’d say Altman feeling the need to “correct the narrative” here, instead of just ignoring Musk, seems like a sign of weakness? He doesn’t seem like the type to naturally get into petty squabbles like this, otherwise.
(And why, yes, this is how an interaction between two Serious People building world-changing existentially dangerous megaprojects looks like. Apparently.)
Some people try to counter Musk’s claim by citing Satya Nadella’s statement that Satya’s “good for his $80 billion”. But that’s not referring to Stargate, that’s about Azure. Microsoft is not listed as investing in Stargate at all, it’s only a “technology partner”.
Here’s a brief analysis from the CIO of some investment firm. He thinks it’s plausible that the stated “initial group of investors” (SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX) may invest fifty billion dollars into it over the next four years; not five hundred billion.
They don’t seem to have the raw cash for even $100 billion – and if SoftBank secured the missing funding from some other set of entities, why aren’t they listed as “initial equity funders” in the announcement?
Overall, I’m inclined to fall back on @Vladimir_Nesov’s analysis here. $30-50 billion this year seems plausible. But $500 billion is, for now, just Altman doing door-in-the-face as he had with his $7 trillion.
I haven’t looked very deeply into it, though. Additions/corrections welcome!
Overall, I think that the new Stargate numbers published may (call it 40%) be true, but I also think there is a decent chance this is new administration trump-esque propoganda/bluster (call it 45%), and little change from the prior expected path of datacenter investment (which I do believe is unintentional AINotKillEveryone-ism in the near future).
Overall, I think that the new Stargate numbers published may (call it 40%) be true, but I also think there is a decent chance this is new administration trump-esque propoganda/bluster (call it 45%),
I think it’s definitely bluster, the question is how much of a done deal it is to turn this bluster into at least $100 billion.
I don’t this this changes the prior expected path of datacenter investment at all. It’s precisely how the expected path was going to look like, the only change is how relatively high-profile/flashy this is being. (Like, if they invest $30-100 billion into the next generation of pretrained models in 2025-2026, and that generation fails, they ain’t seeing the remaining $400 billion no matter what they’re promising now. Next generation makes or breaks the investment into the subsequent one, just as was expected before this.)
He does very explicitly say “I am going to spend 80 billion dollars building Azure”. Which I think has nothing to do with Stargate.
(I think the overall vibe he gives off is “I don’t care about this Stargate thing, I’m going to scale my data centers and that’s that”. I don’t put much stock into this vibe, but it does fit with OpenAI/Microsoft being on the outs.)
So, Project Stargate. Is it real, or is it another “Sam Altman wants $7 trillion”? Some points:
The USG invested nothing in it. Some news outlets are being misleading about this. Trump just stood next to them and looked pretty, maybe indicated he’d cut some red tape. It is not an “AI Manhattan Project”, at least, as of now.
Elon Musk claims that they don’t have the money and that SoftBank (stated to have “financial responsibility” in the announcement) has less than $10 billion secured. If true, while this doesn’t mean they can’t secure an order of magnitude more by tomorrow, this does directly clash with “deploying $100 billion immediately” statement.
But Sam Altman counters that Musk’s statement is “wrong”, as Musk “surely knows”.
I… don’t know which claim I distrust more. Hm, I’d say Altman feeling the need to “correct the narrative” here, instead of just ignoring Musk, seems like a sign of weakness? He doesn’t seem like the type to naturally get into petty squabbles like this, otherwise.
(And why, yes, this is how an interaction between two Serious People building world-changing existentially dangerous megaprojects looks like. Apparently.)
Some people try to counter Musk’s claim by citing Satya Nadella’s statement that Satya’s “good for his $80 billion”. But that’s not referring to Stargate, that’s about Azure. Microsoft is not listed as investing in Stargate at all, it’s only a “technology partner”.
Here’s a brief analysis from the CIO of some investment firm. He thinks it’s plausible that the stated “initial group of investors” (SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, MGX) may invest fifty billion dollars into it over the next four years; not five hundred billion.
They don’t seem to have the raw cash for even $100 billion – and if SoftBank secured the missing funding from some other set of entities, why aren’t they listed as “initial equity funders” in the announcement?
Overall, I’m inclined to fall back on @Vladimir_Nesov’s analysis here. $30-50 billion this year seems plausible. But $500 billion is, for now, just Altman doing door-in-the-face as he had with his $7 trillion.
I haven’t looked very deeply into it, though. Additions/corrections welcome!
Here is what I posted on “Quotes from the Stargate Press Conference”:
On Stargate as a whole:
This is a restatement with a somewhat different org structure of the prior OpenAI/Microsoft data center investment/partnership, announced early last year (admittedly for $100b).
Elon Musk states they do not have anywhere near the 500 billion pledged actually secured:
I do take this as somewhat reasonable, given the partners involved just barely have $125 billion available to invest like this on a short timeline.
Microsoft has around 78 billion cash on hand at a market cap of around 3.2 trillion.
Softbank has 32 billion dollars cash on hand, with a total market cap of 87 billion.
Oracle has around 12 billion cash on hand, with a market cap of around 500 billion.
OpenAI has raised a total of 18 billion, at a valuation of 160 billion.
Further, OpenAI and Microsoft seem to be distancing themselves somewhat—initially this was just an OpenAI/Microsoft project, and now it involves two others and Microsoft just put out a release saying “This new agreement also includes changes to the exclusivity on new capacity, moving to a model where Microsoft has a right of first refusal (ROFR).”
Overall, I think that the new Stargate numbers published may (call it 40%) be true, but I also think there is a decent chance this is new administration trump-esque propoganda/bluster (call it 45%), and little change from the prior expected path of datacenter investment (which I do believe is unintentional AI
NotKillEveryone-ism in the near future).Edit: Satya Nadella was just asked about how funding looks for stargate, and said “Microsoft is good for investing 80b”. This 80b number is the same number Microsoft has been saying repeatedly.
I think it’s definitely bluster, the question is how much of a done deal it is to turn this bluster into at least $100 billion.
I don’t this this changes the prior expected path of datacenter investment at all. It’s precisely how the expected path was going to look like, the only change is how relatively high-profile/flashy this is being. (Like, if they invest $30-100 billion into the next generation of pretrained models in 2025-2026, and that generation fails, they ain’t seeing the remaining $400 billion no matter what they’re promising now. Next generation makes or breaks the investment into the subsequent one, just as was expected before this.)
He does very explicitly say “I am going to spend 80 billion dollars building Azure”. Which I think has nothing to do with Stargate.
(I think the overall vibe he gives off is “I don’t care about this Stargate thing, I’m going to scale my data centers and that’s that”. I don’t put much stock into this vibe, but it does fit with OpenAI/Microsoft being on the outs.)