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Sam Altman seeks to raise up to $7T for new chip project
- 7e 3y agoBetter to remain silent and be thought a fool, then to speak and remove all doubt, Sam.
- nabla9 3y agoThat's a ridiculous sum. Even if you divide it over a decade. Global semiconductor sales are about 0.6 trillion annually. Semiconductor industry is projected to invest $0.5 trillion 2024 into chipmaking. Gulf states are full of dumb money that can be extracted with nice Powerpoint and hype talk, but that's too much even for them. ---- edit ---- In talks with TSMC, Altman has said he wants to build dozens of chip-fabrication plants in the next few years, the people said. His vision would be to raise the money from Middle East investors and have TSMC build and run them. https://archive.is/tyZq2#selection-6231.180-6234.0 https://archive.is/tyZq2#selection-6231.180-6234.0
- TowerTall 3y agoCome on. It is only a slightly above the combined value of Microsoft, Apple and Google. Many people has this kind of pocket change laying around /s
- bluish29 3y agoThe whole arab league GDP (which is whole arab countries not only golf) is about 3.5T [1] which is a little bit over half of this amount. Too much is understatement. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arab_League_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arab_League_countrie...
- nabla9 3y agoGulf states sovereign wealth funds have about $3.7T in total assets. They would have to sell 50% of the assets to get 25% share in Sam Altman's new project.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoIf they tried to sell all $3.7T at once - they'd be lucky to end up with $2.5T.
- cma 3y agoMaybe they just transfer them, first trillion+ barter based fundraising round?
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y agoAt some point, someone usually wants cash instead of shares in Neom (usually quickly), and you need to liquidate those shares for cash, affecting the valuation of said speculative assets.
- Der_Einzige 3y agoSlightly less than related, but sovereign wealth funds can pay absolutely insane amounts of money for the talent that they want. FAANG is far from the end game for truly talented developers.
- nabla9 3y agoWhat's even better, they are not good at recognizing talent. They are incompetent. When some has reputation of being a talent, or appears to be talented catch, they throw money and perks.
- ithkuil 3y agoWho is "they" ? Sovereign funds or faang?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- creativeSlumber 3y ago
- treprinum 3y agoHe's probably pricing hyperinflation into the synergy NPV calculation.
- gentleman11 3y agoBut he's not asking for future dollars, he's asking for present(ish) dollars, in microeconomics terms
- Alex3917 3y agoEven if the gulf states had the money, they still wouldn't do it. The main thing they care about is decreasing their risk of having their assets frozen by the U.S., which is why they are happy to make money-losing investments. Whereas investing this much into a single venture would massively increase their exposure.
- hiddencost 3y agoThese people literally talk about "creating God" and "replacing humans" when they talk about this stuff.
- nijaar 3y agoAre they planning to acquihire Taiwan?
- carterschonwald 3y agothis is insane. like, more than the market cap of nvidia, intel, and amd combined. And thats ignoring that the challenges of manufacturing are different from software
- Erratic6576 3y ago[removed]
- astrodust 3y agoPeople will "have to" because why?
- thunkshift1 3y agoReally? To me this number makes him look like adam neuman 3.0
- potatolicious 3y ago> "The guy became a tech superstar in a few days for popularising the oracle of the 22nd century." This reveals a lot about the people who made him a tech superstar, and very little about his actual underlying abilities. Silicon Valley circa 2024 seems to just be one personality cult after another.
- jonahbenton 3y agoFunded by debt lol. Too much of the magic mushrooms Sam.
- moogly 3y agoHubris, thy name is Sam.
- raincole 3y ago> Feb 8 (Reuters) - OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is in talks with investors, including the UAE, to raise funds for a tech initiative to boost the world's chip-building capacity and expand its ability to power AI, among other things, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. > The project could require raising as much as $5 trillion to $7 trillion, the report added, citing people familiar with the matter. I don't know why I'm reading Reuters report WJS report someone's words. Where is the actual source of this number? Did Sam Altman really say "$7T" or it's just someone's wild guess?
- saalweachter 3y agoMaybe he got confused by the billions / thousand millions thing, and compensated the wrong direction?
- mikeyouse 3y ago"People familiar with the matter" gave the story to the WSJ reporter, so likely people that were in some of the meetings. The WSJ story is more comprehensive: https://archive.is/tyZq2#selection-6231.180-6234.0 https://archive.is/tyZq2#selection-6231.180-6234.0
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ysris 3y ago"- Eh Sam, how was your day ? - Not too bad, almost raised $7T. After being fired, it's a decent achievement"
- mda 3y agoHe is delusional.
- nickthegreek 3y agodupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39310563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39310563
- bradfa 3y ago$7T sounds like a lot of money but reading between the lines seems to be the projected total cost for not just chip design and fab but also infrastructure to support such an industry over a bit of time. That seems reasonable to me. It's not like you can easily spend $7T very quickly, so this total value would likely be spent over many years across many different companies/investments in order to grow the entire AI industry. It's hardware, software, facilities, engineers, scientists, power plants, power distribution networks, silicon fabs, etc.
- JohnFen 3y ago> this total value would likely be spent over many years across many different companies/investments in order to grow the entire AI industry. Sure, in total across many companies, ventures and years as part of an ecosystem. But one entity raising the entire sum? That seems ludicrously unrealistic.
- pc86 3y ago> $7T sounds like a lot of money but Sorry you can stop right there.
- kristjansson 3y agoIt's effectively a Manhattan Project for fab capacity. The US spent $1.9b in 1941 dollars on the Manhattan project, which is about $400b today. On that scale, the 'trillions' number is only tenfold, which ... is still outlandish, and can't possibly be managed by a single private entity, but is order-of-magnitude-correct for "we're going to force the development of a civilizationally determinant technology by overwhelming application of capital"
- hotpotamus 3y agoReminds me of Adam Nuemann's ambition to be the world's first trillionaire.
- crakenzak 3y agoAlthough I do know this is ridiculous for now, I love that we're entering the age of talking in terms of trillions for innovation and investments. Onwards to climbing the Kardashev Scale as a species! Type 1 civilization in the next 200 years?
- baal80spam 3y agoThis is a ridiculous Sam.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- theptip 3y agoA lot of naysayers missing the point in this thread. Is the most likely outcome that we shortly 10x the market for AI chips? Probably not. But, if OpenAI get AGI, or even just strong agents or expert tools, you can easily imagine the demand skyrocketing. If you are a founder or VC, you are into low probability, high payoff bets. Think of this investment in those terms. Let’s say Altman thinks there is a 20% chance of OpenAI getting AGI in 10 years. (Maybe you think it’s lower, I suspect he thinks it is higher) In the possible world where we do get AGI, the value that OpenAI can create will be hard-capped by chip production, so placing a complementary bet on chips means he can prevent this from limiting OpenAI’s growth in the happy case. If this bet pays of 100x in 10% of worlds, it’s a great bet. From Altmans perspective the chip business could break even as long as it unlocks that 100x growth for OpenAI. He’s basically doubling down on his existing portfolio. Another obvious issue in the imaginary AGI world is energy production; and indeed, Altman has big investments in nuclear too. The first company that gets AGI will be the world's first $10T company. Work backwards from that. (None of the above requires particularly high probabilities of actually achieving AGI to make sense as a bet.)
- _giorgio_ 3y agoWe must remember that microsoft will have no share in AGI. https://cryptoslate.com/agi-is-excluded-from-ip-licenses-with-microsoft-should-it-be-attained-at-openai/ https://cryptoslate.com/agi-is-excluded-from-ip-licenses-wit...
- velcrovan 3y agoThe project is code-named “Skynet”
- GlibMonkeyDeath 3y agoThat's well beyond robot army territory (the world spends ~$2T/yr on defense) https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2022/world-military-expenditure-passes-2-trillion-first-time https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2022/world-militar... Also, at ~$1/installed Watt, that is about 1/3 of global energy needs (~20TW) if he just used that to install solar panels. https://atb.nrel.gov/electricity/2021/utility-scale_pv-plus-battery https://atb.nrel.gov/electricity/2021/utility-scale_pv-plus-...
- seydor 3y agoWow inflation has really spiked
- 55555 3y ago7 trillion here, 7 trillion there, pretty soon we're talking about real money.
- gentleman11 3y agoIs this an Austin Powers / Dr. Evil moment where the character doesn't know what decade they're in and how much money to ask for?
- me551ah 3y agoThat's more than the GDP of all countries, except China and USA. What is he gonna go with all that money? Start his own country?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[dupe] Lots of discussion yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39310563 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39310563
- hamburga 3y agoScary. Interesting sales tactic though. Just floating this absurd number out there is classic highball, perhaps will make an investment of “only” 100 billion feel more reasonable to Abu Dhabi or SoftBank.
- kristjansson 3y agoEither (a) someone's source is off by a whole ,000 and the Journal ran with it (b) OpenAI is going to assume nation-state levels debt become the most valuable and powerful company since the Dutch East India Company, or (c) OpenAI is talking to investors and governments around the world about public-private investments in fabs, electricity generation, attendant cities, infrastructure, etc. that might require a total investment over X years and all parties involved of $N trillion dollars. Occam says (a), but (c) seems far more likely than (b).
- ravxx 3y agoi think they would do b if they could, but c is more likely. they will have to hit checkpoints to guarantee revenue in order for all parties involves to continue.
- ijhuygft776 3y agoask for 7 and get 1?