4 ms·
Nvidia to invest up to $1B in AI startup Poolside
- qwertox 1y agoCongratulations to France, the AI leader in Europe.
- lm28469 1y agoI wonder what made them move their headquarters to France
- h1fra 1y agothey received massive funding from french billionaires, maybe it was part of the deal
- nsteel 1y agohttps://www.politico.eu/article/france-emmanuel-macron-pledges-to-catch-up-us-donald-trump-with-e109b-ai-investment/ https://www.politico.eu/article/france-emmanuel-macron-pledg... > "It is the French equivalent of what the U.S. announced with Stargate. It is the same proportion," Macron said.
- nsteel 1y agoJoint with Finland, no?
- conartist6 1y agoCongratulations to the bubble, which is doing well for itself today
- fodkodrasz 1y agoSo this is the current equivalent of the share buybacks on the previous decade?
- Galanwe 1y agoNot sure I get the reference here. Share buybacks are essentially a trick to avoid dividend tax, how is that related?
- maratc 1y agoLast decade, some companies (that had more money that they knew what to do with) used that money to buy shares back. This decade, this company (that has more money that they know what to do with) invests in either "AI" or "AI datacenter" companies — and these use that money to buy the company products.
- _heimdall 1y agoA company buying back shares is spending money to purchase an asset on the open market. A company involved in round tripping passes fictional money in a circle and every company that touches it claims both revenue and expenses simply for passing it along.
- philipallstar 1y ago> Not sure I get the reference here. Share buybacks are essentially a trick to avoid dividend tax, how is that related? What does this mean? What's the trick?
- csomar 1y agoYou can only realize the tax if the stock owners sell the stock (vs. giving them a dividend which triggers the tax on payment). It is more of a tax delay but since many people who bought these stocks have more money than they need, they no longer need to sell and they don't need the dividends much. So a buyback is just injecting that money back into their shares tax-free.
- philipallstar 1y agoYes, that's sort of what I thought must be happening. There's no "trick" involved. It's like saying salaries are a "trick" to avoid dividend tax. They'll still pay tax on it when they sell it.
- f4uCL9dNSnQm 1y agoI wanted to complain how Reuters says close to nothing about Poolside in that news article, but Poolside's own web page is as enigmatic as it gets.
- DebtDeflation 1y agoI Google News searched Poolside and found this: https://techfundingnews.com/nvidia-prepares-up-to-1b-investment-as-poolsides-valuation-jumps-to-12b/ https://techfundingnews.com/nvidia-prepares-up-to-1b-investm... >Poolside operates across the US and Paris, focusing on coding automation tailored for government and defence clients. >The company is also working on bold infrastructure expansion. Earlier this month, Poolside partnered with CoreWeave to build one of the largest data centres in the US under an initiative called Project Horizon. Set in West Texas, the facility is slated to reach 2 gigawatts of capacity, which is enough to power about 1.5 million homes. Searching for Project Horizon led to this: https://poolside.ai/blog/announcing-project-horizon https://poolside.ai/blog/announcing-project-horizon So another data center company, but focused on the Defense/Intelligence community. A hardware equivalent to Palantir?
- AndrewOMartin 1y agoNothing brings joy and optimism like giving $1B to a "coding automation for defence" startup. If there's one person I don't want to lose their job to a shonky AI agent, it's Stanislav Petrov.
- einszwei 1y ago> Poolside partnered with CoreWeave to build one of the largest data centres Nvidia has a backstop deal with Coreweave [1]. I am sure this is all above board but seeing how these giants all have incestuous relationship with each other makes me uneasy about putting money in the markets. [1]:https://www.reuters.com/business/coreweave-nvidia-sign-63-billion-cloud-computing-capacity-order-2025-09-15/ https://www.reuters.com/business/coreweave-nvidia-sign-63-bi...
- throw-qqqqq 1y ago
- ulfw 1y agoThe senseless bubble keeps going up until...
- fxtentacle 1y ago„Nvidia to invest up to $1B in AI startup Poolside“ Let me predict tomorrow’s headline: NVIDIA‘s revenue grows by yet another $1B, because Poolside just ordered $1B worth of NVIDIA AI accelerator cards.
- JCM9 1y agoThese deals all look like classic “round tripping.” Is there any evidence that this activity is generating actual net new $ that didn’t exist previously? Amazon’s recent earnings was full of apparent round tripping. 1. Amazon “invests” in Anthropic (cost) 2. Anthropic takes that money and buys AWS (same dollars come back as revenue) 3. Amazon builds big datacenter for Anthropic (cost) 4. Amazon records a large paper “profit” because the value of the Anthropic “investment” went up after all the stuff it’s doing with the “investment” from Amazon Meanwhile none of the above appears to actually be making any actual profit in terms of revenues > costs. It’s bonkers. These are the same sort of shenanigans that were going on with infrastructure prior to the .com implosion. Did we learn nothing?
- JCM9 1y agoThere’s a whole generation now that wasn’t in the trenches for the .com bust or 2008 crisis that’s blissfully unaware of what’s about to transpire when everything that’s been going on unravels.
- philipallstar 1y ago> 4. Amazon records a large paper “profit” because the value of the Anthropic “investment” went up after all the stuff it’s doing with the “investment” from Amazon This will be offset against the cost of the initial investment, though?
- jonway 1y agoSo the initial investment is free! Lunch is served!!
- philipallstar 1y agoWell - it's potentially a good deal for the supplier if they can buy ownership of companies downstream of them through their supplies.
- jonway 1y ago
- jstummbillig 1y agoWe all know of bubbles. Let's assume the idea of a bubble has not escaped investors attention. Here is where I get confused: - It does not seem very likely that all the people whose entire job it is to make these decisions are completely incompetent. Is it for some reason good to invest badly? How does this work in reality? Does it not matter if an investment goes to zero? Is every investment a good investment, because nvidia sells chips, is that how the math works here? - Absolutely everyone and their mum talks bubble and supposedly can see it clearly (in contrast to for example the 2008 housing bubble) but nobody in power has the ability to act rationally. What the idea here? - If it can be explained, that every investment is good now, and the answer to the previous question is something like "greed", why stop at a measly billion? Why not just, say, 10 billion? The money is there obviously. More "bad" investment = better?
- perlgeek 1y agoVC investments are inherently high-risk, high reward. That is, most of the investments will go to zero, but hopefully one or two really good ones make up for it. In order to make that work, you have to invest in many different startups, which is what Nvidia seems to do. Nvidia has the additional advantage that some of their invested money will make it back to them in the form of dollars spent on compute, which makes their investments cheaper for them, relatively speaking. > If it can be explained, that every investment is good now, and the answer to the previous question is something like "greed", why stop at a measly billion? Why not just, say, 10 billion? If the startup isn't looking to raise 10 billion, why give it 10 billion? Instead, give 10 startups one billion each, to spread out the risk.
- rwmj 1y agoIt's like the boss of Citicorp said back in 2008, "as long as the music is playing, you've got to get up and dance". If you withdraw from the market entirely then you'll definitely lose. So they try to time the market and hope to get out when the music stops. Didn't exactly work out well for Citicorp.
- jstummbillig 1y agoHm. So what's the idea. All of FAANG, all investors, they all do it like that citibank person said, who failed catastrophically, because...? At best this tale reads to me: Even if you are fully aware, and super big, you are high risk of losing it all, and most people will lose it all. Is everyone who was involved in building these mega corps by investing smartly over fairly long periods of time now delusional, at the same time? We can see it, but they can't? Is that what's required to explain it? I am not much of a trader, but I assume there are always insane opportunities to invest a few billion dollars in high risk/high gain stuff, no? Why wait for AI? You can try to time any market. What explains the enormous amount of money into this one?
- thelastgallon 1y agoGotta keep up the bubble. The Data Center Bubble: https://www.brethorsting.com/blog/2025/10/the-data-center-bubble/ https://www.brethorsting.com/blog/2025/10/the-data-center-bu... Global Crossing Is Reborn: https://pracap.com/global-crossing-reborn/ https://pracap.com/global-crossing-reborn/
- nabla9 1y agoWith 70%+ profit margins on data centers, it's enough that just $1.43 billion in data center revenue is secured for $1b investment to pay back. Nvidia's larger investments are even more conditional. With OpenAI, the investment is contingent on building huge data centers in the future. If the bubble ends, Nvidia pays nothing; if it continues, Nvidia has locked in a customer. Nvidia plays smart with little risk.
- shell_game 1y agoMy take is this is mostly a takeout of Amazon’s trainium program, helping Nvidia to cull competition from Amazon in its infancy. Up until the date of the announcement, poolside was one of Amazon’s largest trainium customers, other than anthropic. This investment from Nvidia kicks one of the legs out from Amazon’s already rickety AI accelerator stool. 40 K in Blackwell GPUs is expensive even with the Nvidia investment. Poolside will likely not have the money to spend an equivalent amount now with Amazon.
- bradfa 1y agoSeems to make sense, if Poolside is selling a product which requires (or strongly recommends) that Poolside customers have on-prem or private cloud compute capability in order to fully integrate all the tools, right now that compute need is likely going to be filled by using NVIDIA hardware. So even if NVIDIA isn't selling a ton of hardware directly to Poolside, NVIDIA is likely going to sell a whole bunch of hardware to businesses using Poolside's solutions. As much as the whole AI thing feels like a bubble, this feels less round-trip-like to me than some of the other recent deals which have been in the press.