Google's research team invented the Transformer Architecture at the center of LLM "AI". A huge invention.
California has added roughly 17GW of grid-scale batteries in the last five years. Modern GPU (NVIDIA). Modern electric car (Tesla). Reusable Rockets (SpaceX).
I agree that the US has an "Only Elon-led companies can get things done outside of computers" problem.
My understanding is that the S-1 showed a Q1 loss of xAI of $2.47 billion in Q1. But with the Anthropic Colossus-I rental agreement at $1.25B/month or $3.75B/quarter, xAI should now be net-neutral to cash-flow positive.
If Colossus-II rents networked GB-200s, that could be up to +$47B/year at $9/hour/GB-200 for 555,000 GB-200s. For reference, current rental rates are $10-$27/hour for the same hardware. With Anthropic at a 55% month-over-month growth rate (implying a $150B/year run rate by August, or, more likely, sometime in late 2026), it seems very possible that xAI could be highly profitable as the only available compute resource.
I'm not saying +$47B Colossus-II deal will happen, but even a small fraction of that remains highly material to xAI economics. xAI is likely already cashflow neutral. (Where am I wrong?)
Awesome article. Please read the entire thing. Gary takes a well-deserved shot at the US false use of "third‑worldification" as a stand in for "our own low-trust society".
This crap will only stop when there is:
1. A ton of new housing for all people.
2. Treat everyone the same. Same amount of test time etc.
Otherwise, our society is just a race to see who can claim the most special 'privilege' via some form of 'issue' or 'need'.
It would be great to see detailed demographic breakdowns of exactly who's making these heavy special-privilege claims, as the details may surprise a variety of commentators on this forum. Though I don't think Gary has access to that data.
The UV light source that ASML uses for its lithography machine is technology that was acquired in the 2013 acquisition of San Diego-based Cymber. The tech stack for the advanced light source dates back to the "EUV LLC Initiative," led by DARPA in the mid-1990s.
US origins of the key technology here give the US a veto here regardless of ASML's Dutch headquarters.
Or, we could study why public infrastructure costs radically more than the US, than other countries, then change our laws and both save billions of $ and have great new public transit!
Is there a non-subscription link to read on this? (Note: My comment below is without reading the article.)
Honestly, to me, one of the most exciting aspects of Lip-Bu Tan as CEO of Intel is actually spinning in his US startup portfolio. To use the old John Doerr quote, "No conflict, no interest!"
But my hope is that Intel becomes a successful operating business. I'm still not convinced that the Chairman of the Board of Intel doesn't want to break it up in a "part out" deal. And I'd strongly suspect that the media focus here is part of a larger fight.
Until the board of directors that oversaw the disastrous 10 years of Intel is fully replaced, Lip-Bu Tan's "Conflicts" are great things in my book.
Well, I want more multifamily housing (apartments or condos) to lower prices in good cities near pubic transit.
So let me propose: a wealth tax on land! ("Georgism"). But not a tax on the "value of improvements," i.e, buildings. This disincentivizes single-family homes near train stations (widespread in the town I grew up in) and is very low-cost to collect.
I don't know where you're writing from. But here in California, the source of all evil (Prop 13) originated with single-family homeowners trying to *escape the property taxes that result from their opposing new development.
Given how spectacularly CA housing policy has failed, perhaps it's time to try the opposite: Let's abolish all income taxes and exclusively tax land instead! (Land taxes have the property of being extremely progressive wealth taxes that are dead simple to administer.)
It's a great question. Here are two Paul Graham (PG) quotes on Sam Altman (Sama) from 2008 and 2009.
Note, PG is the founder of YC, Sam's former boss, and the one who removed Sam from the position of President of YC after first appointing Sam to succeed him as President of YC. (Sama was more focused on OpenAI than on YC at the time, which doesn't work when you're supposed to be leading YC.)
Sam Altman has it. You could parachute him into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he'd be the king. If you're Sam Altman, you don't have to be profitable to convey to investors that you'll succeed with or without them. (He wasn't, and he did.) Not everyone has Sam's deal-making ability. I myself don't. But if you don't, you can let the numbers speak for you.
5. Sam Altman
I was told I shouldn't mention founders of YC-funded companies in this list. But Sam Altman can't be stopped by such flimsy rules. If he wants to be on this list, he's going to be.
...
What I learned from meeting Sama is that the doctrine of the elect applies to startups. It applies way less than most people think: startup investing does not consist of trying to pick winners the way you might in a horse race. But there are a few people with such force of will that they're going to get whatever they want.
from OpenAI to Helion energy (Fusion), to Retro Biosciences (longevity), Neuralink (brain computer interface), to Reddit
Sama really wants to "build the future," and when some of those investments "hit", like OpenAI did - basically become the first new company with a clear path to a $1T valuation since Facebook or TikTok), you gain immense credibility for "betting the future will happen and getting your organization there first."
If YC's motto is "build something people want," and OpenAI is now serving 800M active users while delivering incredible revenue growth (and investors want to see both). Sama gains power by giving investors what they want, by giving users what they want, and basically authoring an entire new type of software company and a new part of the economy.
A thing to note here is that, being a YC partner and top angel investor from 2011 to 2020, you can argue that Sam himself is "the most successful YC graduate." He saw thousands of companies go through YC. He saw hundreds of 'hard tech companies' go through YC. And in that decade, he could only have learned an immense amount about how VCs/successful CEOs think and make decisions. Certainly, we see the learnings of those experiences in what he's been able to pull off since.
Well, if 2/3 of SpaceX's current launches are for Starlink (which deploys satellites in LEO), isn't a two-stage, fully reusable vehicle optimized for LEO deployment the thing SpaceX would want to build?
In terms of "free cash flow" expectations, are you aware that approximately 90% of "space" revenue and profit comes from satellite telecom services, with launch services accounting for about 10% of the mix? SpaceX's development of a telecommunications constellation (Starlink) is highly consistent with historical industry patterns of what makes profit in space.
https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/5cll43/while_you_wer...