Smash Notes
Why Do AI Labs Keep Their Best Models Internal? · Big Technology Podcast

Big Technology Podcast

Can AI Keep Growing Exponentially? Let’s Ask SemiAnalysis — With Dylan Patel and Jordan Nanos

Dylan Patel is founder and CEO of SemiAnalysis, Jordan Nanos is a member of its technical staff. Patel and Nanos join Big Technology to discuss whether AI’s massive infrastructure buildout can justify the trillions of dollars being spent on compute. Tune in to hear how big the boom could get, where the revenue needed to support it will come from, and what…

People

Notes

  1. How Big Is Next Year's AI Capital Spending? at 2:16

    Dylan Patel says next year's capital spending for the AI build-out in the United States is on the order of $2 trillion. Full answer

  2. Can AI Infrastructure Spending Keep Growing Exponentially? at 7:55

    Dylan Patel says AI capital spending cannot keep compounding at triple-digit rates from here. The build-out runs out of things to organize. Full answer

  3. How Much Revenue Does $1 Trillion of AI Data Center Spending Need? at 10:43

    Dylan Patel says a trillion dollars spent today on an AI data center and GPUs needs about $1.5 trillion of revenue over six years if payback is a straight… Full answer

  4. Is Anthropic Profitable After Compute Costs? at 13:24

    Dylan Patel says Anthropic is now profitable once revenue is set against compute cost, with training and inference combined. Full answer

  5. Will AI Replace Knowledge Work in the Next Few Years? at 20:00

    Dylan Patel says AI will not replace knowledge work in the next few years. Full answer

  6. Can Hyperscalers Cancel Neocloud Contracts Each Month? at 22:08

    Jordan Nanos says hyperscalers and large frontier labs signing neocloud contracts generally do not have a right to cancel every month and walk away. Full answer

  7. Could Anthropic Be Worth $10 Trillion? at 26:12

    Dylan Patel says Anthropic could be the first company in the world with a $10 trillion valuation, and the bullish case also reaches $20 trillion. Full answer

  8. How Much Is Nvidia Backstopping Neoclouds? at 38:46

    Jordan Nanos says SemiAnalysis is tracking $588 billion of off-balance-sheet backstops that Nvidia is supporting. Full answer

  9. Can Open-source Models Hack a Neocloud? at 42:57

    Dylan Patel says most neoclouds have terrible security, and open-source models can hack one or reach other customers' data on it. Full answer

  10. Why Did Oracle's New Mexico AI Data Center Slip? at 48:56

    Dylan Patel says Oracle's New Mexico data center slipped because the pipelines were not going to arrive, and the site cannot be built without them. Full answer

  11. Why Do So Many Neoclouds Fail ClusterMax? at 52:44

    Jordan Nanos says most neoclouds still miss the ClusterMax bar because a seller's market rewards raising money, building data centers, and deploying chips… Full answer

  12. Which AI Lab Has the Least Compute? at 55:16

    Dylan Patel says DeepMind has the least compute of Anthropic, OpenAI, and DeepMind by the end of the year. Full answer

  13. Why Do AI Labs Keep Their Best Models Internal? at 59:09

    Dylan Patel says frontier labs are keeping months of new-model progress inside the company, because once a model is public other people can distill it. Full answer

Related notes

Related episodes

Plays from this note through the rest of the episode.

Note

Weekly highlights

One letter a week.

The notes worth hearing, with the minute they were said.