[HN Gopher] Meta's open AI hardware vision
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       Meta's open AI hardware vision
        
       Author : GavCo
       Score  : 160 points
       Date   : 2024-10-15 18:08 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (engineering.fb.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (engineering.fb.com)
        
       | andrewstuart wrote:
       | Free and open LLMs will be compelling to many of users that
       | cannot or do not want to use online services.
       | 
       | It's good that a large company like Meta seems to be pushing it
       | forward with openllama 3.2.
       | 
       | Open, quality LLMs must lead to some tense discussions at OpenAI
       | and Anthropic about whether they should be open or closed.
       | 
       | OpenAI Whisper is open source and it's extremely good although it
       | appeared to me the online version is much faster.
        
         | blihp wrote:
         | Likely not tense as it seems pretty clear where everyone stands
         | on this. OpenAI and Anthropic are likely having conversations
         | along the lines of 'move faster and build the moat!' while Meta
         | is having a conversation along the lines of 'move faster and
         | destroy the moat!'
         | 
         | It's not that Meta has anything against moats, it's just that
         | they've seen how it works when they try to build their moat on
         | top of someone else's (i.e. Apple and Google re: mobile) and it
         | didn't work out too well.
        
           | andrewstuart wrote:
           | So they're trying to be what Android is to the iPhone?
        
             | LorenDB wrote:
             | Precisely, and that extends to their XR ambitions as well:
             | https://www.meta.com/blog/quest/meta-horizon-os-open-
             | hardwar...
        
           | threeseed wrote:
           | Also the EU is far more aggressive and opinionated about what
           | they want to see in the market than during the smartphone
           | era. And this is spreading across the world.
           | 
           | So being committed to an open, standards-based strategy is an
           | easy way for them to avoid most of the risks.
        
       | dudus wrote:
       | Very impressive. Not sure if worth $40 Billion. But very
       | impressive nonetheless.
        
         | flkenosad wrote:
         | That made me laugh. $40 billion is absurd.
        
         | airstrike wrote:
         | Beats buying Twitter, that's for sure.
        
           | throwaway48476 wrote:
           | Twitter was always very overvalued because it's real value
           | case can't be expressed in dollar terms.
        
       | jameslk wrote:
       | That title is most definitely a swipe at OpenAI. It seems there's
       | a theme of two types of platform companies: the closed one that
       | has the "premium" platform, and the open one that gets market
       | share by commodifying the platform.
       | 
       | macOS vs Windows
       | 
       | iOS vs Android
       | 
       | OpenAI vs Meta AI?
       | 
       | Edit: Another observation is Meta seems to open things
       | defensively. Facebook had a rich developer platform until
       | Facebook stopped needing to grab market share. Meta's VR platform
       | was closed until Apple challenged them with Vision Pro. Then Meta
       | announced open sourcing Horizon OS. I wonder if Meta will truly
       | keep things open if they win, or if it's more like a case of EEE?
        
         | giancarlostoro wrote:
         | I've used OpenAI's tech, and I've used their competitors tech,
         | but I've never used any of Facebooks AI tech yet. Is there
         | something I'm missing out on?
        
           | edm0nd wrote:
           | Meta = LLaMA
           | 
           | I think the bet is that many other things will use their
           | llama that you then use. Perhaps without you even knowing
           | this.
        
           | a_wild_dandan wrote:
           | Running a (405B) flagship model locally on a Mac Studio?
           | Otherwise, no. Most of these products are fairly similar.
        
           | herval wrote:
           | Ever heard of pytorch?
        
             | giancarlostoro wrote:
             | Never used it myself, but that's a good call out and
             | precisely why I asked.
        
         | jsheard wrote:
         | Windows and Android took the commodity approach but they always
         | had a business model, while Meta AI is currently running on
         | Underpants Gnomes economics.
         | 
         | 1. Spend billions on a product, then give it away for free.
         | 
         | 2. ???
         | 
         | 3. Profit!
         | 
         |  _> Then Meta announced open sourcing Horizon OS._
         | 
         | Open sourcing isn't really the right term, they're allowing
         | third party hardware vendors to use it but it's still
         | proprietary. Horizon OS is built on top of Android and they're
         | following the Android playbook where the core is technically
         | open source but the version nearly everyone actually uses has a
         | bunch of proprietary Google (or Meta) software layered on top,
         | and Google (or Meta) dictates the terms of using that software,
         | which lets them ensure that revenue always flows back to Google
         | (or Meta) regardless of who made the hardware.
        
           | herval wrote:
           | They use the models they opensource in their own products,
           | no? I don't think Meta is looking to profit selling LLMs...
        
             | TechDebtDevin wrote:
             | > "I don't think Meta is looking to profit selling LLMs..."
             | 
             | Said no one ever.
        
               | dartos wrote:
               | OP said it... I also don't think meta is looking to sell
               | LLMs.
               | 
               | Probably LLM backed products. Likely marketing tools if
               | anything.
               | 
               | But not the same way OAI sells LLMs
        
               | TechDebtDevin wrote:
               | Maybe not "sell" but if you look at my other comment on
               | this post you'll see their valuation has increased 162
               | billion since they released their first open source
               | model. They definitely are looking to profit, they just
               | take a different approach to monetization. Same thing in
               | my book.
        
               | richardw wrote:
               | Excellent move to juice the stock price but it's not
               | profit. I think it's more a hope for profit one day, a
               | ticket to the game.
        
               | herval wrote:
               | So you're saying Meta stock grew this year because they
               | released an open source LLM?
        
             | falcor84 wrote:
             | Not exactly "sell", but I do recall Zuckerberg saying that
             | they have a revenue sharing agreement with platforms like
             | AWS Bedrock that offer Llama inference.
        
           | bentice wrote:
           | Don't they charge cloud vendors who sell LLAMA models on
           | their platform? My understanding is that is part of the
           | licensing agreement. Its more like:
           | 
           | 1. Spend billions on a product.
           | 
           | 2. Make it free to work with and charge to commercialize it.
           | 
           | 3. Profit
        
           | sangnoir wrote:
           | Meta and Google are the companies most able to monetize AI-
           | generated or AI-enhanced[1] content on their respective
           | properties.
           | 
           | 1. Meta showed off automatic audio translation that preserves
           | speaker's voices. Content creators can now expand their
           | following beyond their spoken languages, generating more ad
           | impressions.
        
         | KaiserPro wrote:
         | OCP has been about for _years_. Almost since facebook was a
         | thing.
         | 
         | Facebook the site had a rich platform until they had to secure
         | it against people stealing your data, and your mate's data and
         | pretending that they had a really rich dataset on most of the
         | western world's adult population (ie Cambridge analytica )
         | 
         | Horizon OS is a fucking mess and isn't anything really to do
         | with Apple, its more to do with the making sure samsung don't
         | use android for what ever shit they produce.
         | 
         | OpenAI aren't going to compete with Meta, as they aren't in the
         | same game. OpenAI has to make money from its offerings, Meta's
         | AI shit is a byproduct of other things (see massive spending on
         | "reality labs")
        
         | wubrr wrote:
         | > That title is most definitely a swipe at OpenAI.
         | 
         | Eh, 'OpenAI' is a swipe at OpenAI.
        
         | osrec wrote:
         | What is EEE?
        
           | ArnoVW wrote:
           | Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
           | 
           | Famously the Microsoft strategy against Java.
        
           | richardw wrote:
           | I assume it's embrace, extend, extinguish:
           | 
           | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extingu.
           | ..
        
         | hintymad wrote:
         | OpenAI does not have its own platform yet but depend on Azure?
         | If so, they probably should build their platform to squeeze out
         | as much cost as possible.
        
           | johannes1234321 wrote:
           | They have their own platform - a platform to build AI tools
           | on top of their API. The hardware layer below is abstracted
           | away.
        
         | ipaddr wrote:
         | macOS isn't a premium product over Windows nor is iOS over
         | Android. Windows isn't really an open platform either. OpenAI
         | is more open as it doesn't require logging in.
         | 
         | A simple narrative doesn't exist connecting these three product
         | battles. The only thing that comes to mind is macOS, iOS and
         | OpenAI are designed for the novice. You could probably add
         | Coinbase vs Binance or Uber vs Lyft or Facebook vs Google Plus
         | and be able to keep that narrative.
        
         | wkat4242 wrote:
         | Meta's VR wasn't really a lot more closed to be honest. They've
         | just dropped the deep review process and anyone can now publish
         | to the main store what was previously 'app lab'. They've been
         | heading this way for a long time, a couple years ago they
         | didn't even have app lab.
         | 
         | And the OS being open isn't really that relevant unless you're
         | a system integrator. I really doubt whether this is in response
         | to Apple. They seem to operate in entirely different markets. I
         | love VR but I can never buy a vision pro. It's twice what I've
         | ever spent on my most expensive car.
        
       | Quekid5 wrote:
       | "Open" is a meme at this point, isn't it?
        
         | righthand wrote:
         | Open as in you get to open the box.
         | 
         | Or maybe Open as in "open for business".
        
         | epistasis wrote:
         | Having used and learned from the architectures that Facebook
         | has published via OCP over the past decade, this is not a
         | "meme" but actual real information and designs that Facebook
         | uses to commoditize their supply chain and that others can use
         | too.
        
           | throwaway48476 wrote:
           | Some designs such as OCP NIC have become industry standard.
        
           | Quekid5 wrote:
           | ... but that's been a thing since ever using the "Open"
           | moniker? I just feel "Open" is a mental shortcut that's being
           | misused a bit.
           | 
           | See, e.g. [0] for an example of Facebook (now: Meta) for
           | admirable dissemination of knowledge.
           | 
           | [0] https://engineering.fb.com/2015/06/26/security/fighting-
           | spam...
        
             | epistasis wrote:
             | I've not noticed a change in the amount of usage of "open"
             | or any mental shortcuts about it since it was introduced
             | via the term "open source" in the 1990s. If anything,
             | there's less discussion and abuse of the term now. The only
             | memery that I see is from OpenAI, which had aspirations to
             | openness in the past but which today is a sham.
             | 
             | Facebooks open efforts here are completely great, IMHO, and
             | have benefited me personally and professionally.
        
       | seydor wrote:
       | They ve already gone after openAi, are they after Nvidia now?
        
         | throwup238 wrote:
         | No, this is a rack built on NVIDIA's platform, so this is just
         | more $$$ for them.
        
           | moffkalast wrote:
           | Yeah this is... nothing. At least nothing anyone worth less
           | than a few billion could ever care about.
           | 
           | Would be far more interesting to see MTIA in an edge compute
           | PCIe form.
        
           | throwaway48476 wrote:
           | There's also an AMD rack and meta is big enough that they
           | won't get blacklisted for it.
        
           | mhandley wrote:
           | The article talks about NVidia racks, but also about their
           | DSF [0], which is Ethernet-based (as opposed to Infiniband)
           | built on switches using Cisco and Broadcom chipsets and
           | custom ASIC xPU accelerators such as their own MTIA [1] which
           | is built for them by Broadcom. So they are talking more than
           | one approach simultaneously.
           | 
           | [0] https://engineering.fb.com/2024/10/15/data-
           | infrastructure/op...
           | 
           | [1] https://ai.meta.com/blog/next-generation-meta-training-
           | infer...
        
         | KaoruAoiShiho wrote:
         | Sort of, while yes this uses Nvidia, one of Nvidia's moats or
         | big advantages is its rack scale integration. AMD and other
         | providers just can't scale up easily, they are behind in terms
         | of connecting tons of GPUs together effectively. So doing this
         | part themselves instead of buying Nvidia's much-hyped
         | (deservedly) NVL72 solution, which is a nonpareil rack system
         | with 72 GPUs in it, and then opensourcing it, opens the door to
         | possibly integrating AMD GPUs in the future and this hurts
         | Nvidia's moat.
        
       | Gee101 wrote:
       | Zuckerberg and Facebook gets a lot of hate but at least they
       | invest a lot into engineering and open source.
        
         | threeseed wrote:
         | Also the fact that he is delivering on Fediverse integration
         | with Threads.
         | 
         | I don't think most people expected that to happen so quickly or
         | frankly at all.
        
           | KaiserPro wrote:
           | Neither did the company.
           | 
           | Most new products fail at meta, because they become a
           | "priority", throw thousands of engineers at the problem and
           | get bogged down in managing a massive oversubscription of
           | engineers to useful work ratio.
           | 
           | Threads happened because a few people managed to convince
           | each other to take a risk and build a instagram/mastodon
           | chimera. They managed to show enough progress to continue
           | without getting fucked in the performance review, but not
           | enough for an exec to get excited about building an empire
           | around it.
        
           | oersted wrote:
           | VR also gets a lot of hate, and they definitely dropped the
           | ball on user-facing software, but Meta is doing very
           | substantial, deep and valuable long-term R&D on VR hardware.
           | They are also doing a lot on systems software, with their OS
           | and all the low-key AI that enables excellent real-time
           | tracking, rendering and AR.
           | 
           | It might not all be open-source, and they are doing it with
           | an expectation of long-term profit, but they are earnestly
           | pushing the horizons (pun intended) of the field and taking-
           | on lots of risk for everyone else.
           | 
           | It's undeniable now that they are a serious and innovative
           | engineering organization, while Google is rapidly loosing
           | that reputation.
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | I personally think our academia should be training and curating
         | these kinds of models and the data they are based on, but this
         | is an acceptable second best.
        
           | 123yawaworht456 wrote:
           | there's already https://www.goody2.ai/chat
        
           | asdff wrote:
           | IMO there are much better ways to spend 300 million in
           | research beyond firing up a cluster for 60 days to train on
           | internet content.
        
         | KptMarchewa wrote:
         | Aggressively commoditizing the complement has been a good
         | strategy for them.
        
           | lossolo wrote:
           | > good strategy for them.
           | 
           | For everyone, besides OpenAI etc.
        
         | diggan wrote:
         | > and open source
         | 
         | I'm kind of split about this. Yes, Facebook done a lot of great
         | Open Source in the past, and I'm sure they'll do more great
         | Open Source in the future.
         | 
         | But it's really hard to see them in a positive light when they
         | keep misleading people about Llama, and publish blog posts that
         | say how important Open Source is etc etc, then refuse to
         | actually release Llama as Open Source, refuse to elaborate on
         | why they see it as Open Source while no one else does it and
         | refuse to take a step back and understand how the FOSS
         | community feels when they actively mislead people like this.
        
         | the_clarence wrote:
         | The hate is mostly from people who don't use their products.
         | Plenty of people are happy users
        
       | m_ke wrote:
       | I wonder when Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI will partner on an open
       | chip design to compete with NVIDIA.
       | 
       | They're all blowing billions of dollars on NVIDIA hardware with
       | like 70% margin and with triton backing PyTorch it shouldn't be
       | that hard to move off of CUDA stack.
        
         | throwaway48476 wrote:
         | Each of them is designing their own hardware. The goal isn't
         | really to compete with nvidia though, whose market is general
         | purpose GPU compute. Instead they're customizing hardware for
         | inference to drive down product cost.
        
         | infecto wrote:
         | What is a large mount of money to you, is not that significant
         | to some of these companies. I suspect for the vast majority of
         | these companies, it still represents a small expense. General
         | sentiment is that there is probably overspending in the area
         | but its better to spend it and not risk being left behind.
        
           | m_ke wrote:
           | Half of NVIDIA's 2nd quarter revenue (30 billion) came from 4
           | customers, with Microsoft and Meta already having spent 40-60
           | billion each on GPU data centers (of which most goes to
           | NVIDIA). "Open"AI just raised a few billion and is supposedly
           | planning on building their own training clusters soon.
           | 
           | For a small fraction of that they could poach a ton of people
           | from NVIDIA and publish a new open chip spec that anyone
           | could manufacture.
           | 
           | https://www.fool.com/investing/2024/09/12/46-nvidias-30-bill.
           | ..
        
         | insane_dreamer wrote:
         | I can't see Meta and MSFT getting into the chip design
         | business. Maybe OpenAI.
         | 
         | Apple's already not using nVidia chips to train its models.
        
           | mhh__ wrote:
           | I think Microsoft have dabbled in the space already.
        
           | mhandley wrote:
           | Meta is already in the chip design business, albeit in
           | collaboration with Broadcom who build it for them:
           | https://ai.meta.com/blog/next-generation-meta-training-
           | infer...
        
         | mhh__ wrote:
         | It would require a fairly big bet on AI models not changing
         | structure all that much, I guess
         | 
         | I think if the tooling and supply chain falls into place it
         | would surprise me if meta and friends _didn 't_ make their own
         | chips, assuming it was a good fit of course.
         | 
         | Note: AMD's missed opportunity here is so bad people jump "make
         | their own chip" rather than "buy AMD". Although watch that
         | space.
        
           | ClassyJacket wrote:
           | Aren't they basically safe as long as future AI models are
           | still basically multiplying tensors of floats?
        
         | wmf wrote:
         | https://ai.meta.com/blog/next-generation-meta-training-infer...
         | 
         | https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/azure-maia-for-the-er...
         | 
         | They're not teaming up and neither design is open, but they
         | definitely have their own designs.
        
       | TechDebtDevin wrote:
       | > "This effort pushed our infrastructure to operate across more
       | than 16,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs, making Llama 3.1 405B the first
       | model in the Llama series to be trained at such a massive scale."
       | 
       | So at 20k a pop (assuming meta has a decent wholesale price from
       | Nividia) they spent $320 MILLION on the 405B model (not including
       | probably 5-10 million in electricity for the training process,
       | water, staff, infra).
       | 
       | Do we think that brings more than 400+ million in value to Meta?
       | I think so. I don't want to do the math, so I'll ask Perplexity
       | to look it up:
       | 
       | > "How much has Meta's valuation increased since they released
       | their first open source model"
       | 
       | Answer (edited):
       | 
       | > Closing price on February 23, 2023: $509.50 > Closing price on
       | October 11, 2024: $573.68 > The increase in stock price is $64.18
       | per share. > Total increase = Price increase per share x Number
       | of outstanding shares > Total increase = $64.18 x 2,534,000,000 =
       | $162,632,100,000 > Meta's stock valuation has increased by
       | approximately $162.63 billion since the release of their first
       | open source model on February 24, 2023.
       | 
       | They seem to be making the right choices!
        
         | JumpCrisscross wrote:
         | > _Do we think that brings more than 400+ million in value to
         | Meta?_
         | 
         | Tough to tell, given nobody is turning a net profit on LLMs
         | yet.
         | 
         | Companies have a tendency to develop neuroses, though, just
         | like people. Apple's near miss with bankruptcy fuelled cash
         | hoarding. For Facebook, their disastrous IPO and near miss of
         | mobile seems to have made them hyper aware of the Innovator's
         | Dilemma. $400mm spent on a defensive move is certainly wider
         | than tens of billions on the metaverse.
        
           | sdesol wrote:
           | > Tough to tell, given nobody is turning a net profit on LLMs
           | yet.
           | 
           | I suspect in the case of Meta and other big players, profit
           | isn't necessary required to bring substantial value. Imagine
           | their model being able to help them moderate more fairly and
           | accurately. This alone could prevent potential legal actions
           | from individuals, companies, and governments.
        
             | JumpCrisscross wrote:
             | > _profit isn 't necessary required to bring substantial
             | value_
             | 
             | They're private companies. If they can't tie it to profit,
             | it's not adding value.
             | 
             | > _being able to help them moderate more fairly and
             | accurately_
             | 
             | This reduces legal costs and increases strategic
             | flexibility. Sort of like HR or legal departments: cost
             | centres add value by controlling costs, a critical
             | component of profitability.
        
               | llm_trw wrote:
               | Providing toilets to employees does not tie to profit.
               | Toilets in all offices are now closed. We are saving over
               | $10k per day.
        
               | geodel wrote:
               | Some people are gonna shit in their pants hearing this
               | new policy.
        
               | hx8 wrote:
               | > They're private companies. If they can't tie it to
               | profit, it's not adding value.
               | 
               | Not true, even strictly from an accounting perspective.
               | If you spend $400M and build an asset that is worth
               | >$400M, then you have increased the value of the company
               | without modifying profit. For example, if a company were
               | to buy land, and build a building, that building has a
               | value regardless of if it is associated with any revenue.
        
               | JumpCrisscross wrote:
               | > * If you spend $400M and build an asset that is worth
               | >$400M, then you have increased the value of the company
               | without modifying profit. For example, if a company were
               | to buy land, and build a building, that building has a
               | value regardless of if it is associated with any revenue*
               | 
               | Why does it have value? It's because it can be rented,
               | occupied for productive use or sold to someone who can do
               | either of those. Revenue-free assets are essentially
               | money. (Companies aren't in the business of non-revenue
               | non-monetary assets--that's the domain of society at
               | large.)
        
               | com2kid wrote:
               | > They're private companies. If they can't tie it to
               | profit, it's not adding value.
               | 
               | Smart companies understand other types of value exist.
               | 
               | If a democratic population hates you, it is harder to
               | convince politicians to do your bidding. (Not impossible,
               | just harder!)
               | 
               | If potential employees don't think kindly of you, it is
               | harder to recruit.
               | 
               | Llama is a constant source of good PR for Meta in the
               | developer community. Compared to just a couple of years
               | ago when they were mostly laughed at by devs for
               | metaverse stuff. Now it is "holy cow Zuck is standing up
               | to Microsoft and Amazon and democratizing AI!"
               | 
               | With Llama, Meta has got great PR, and also developed
               | cutting edge tech.
               | 
               | They also get to benefit from thousands of developers
               | trying to make Meta's models run more efficiently.
        
           | sangnoir wrote:
           | > Tough to tell, given nobody is turning a net profit on LLMs
           | yet
           | 
           | Perhaps, but Meta is definitely getting _some_ money back
           | from ad impressions supported by AI-generated content.
        
             | JumpCrisscross wrote:
             | Correct. We know these models are producing fucktonnes of
             | revenue. At least some of them can be run at a gross
             | profit, _i.e._ where marginal power costs and capital costs
             | are less than marginal revenues. (Put another way: if
             | OpenAI were an absolute monopoly and stopped training new
             | models, could it turn a profit?)
             | 
             | What's unclear is if this is a short-term revenue benefit
             | from people fucking around with the newest, shiniest model,
             | or recurring revenue that is only appearing unprofitable
             | because the frontier is advancing so quickly.
        
               | TechDebtDevin wrote:
               | From the little we know about OpenAIs inference infra, I
               | feel like I can confidently say that if training stopped
               | today, and they got cut off Azure subsidies, their $20.00
               | subscription model would probably not cover the cost of
               | Inference.
               | 
               | I know nothing about the enterprise side of OpenAI but
               | I'm sure they're profitable there. I doubt the
               | subscription cost of a single _power user_ of ChatGPT
               | Plus covers the water they consume as a single user (This
               | is probably an exaggeration, but I think I 'm in the
               | ballpark).
        
               | JumpCrisscross wrote:
               | It may be that extra-large LLMs don't make sense for
               | ChatGPT. They're for enterprise use, like supercomputers.
               | The reason I say "at least some" is I've found use in
               | running a local instance of Llama, which seems to imply
               | there is _some_ niche of (legal) activities AI can
               | support sustainably. (Versus, _e.g._ crypto.)
        
         | trsohmers wrote:
         | Do you think that the 16k GPUs get used once and then are
         | thrown away? Llama 405B was trained over 56 days on the 16k
         | GPUs; if I round that up to 60 days and assume the current
         | mainstream hourly rate of $2/H100/hour from the Neoclouds
         | (which are obviously making margin), that comes out to a total
         | cost of ~$47M. Obviously Meta is training a lot of models using
         | their GPU equipment, and would expect it to be in service for
         | at least 3 years, and their cost is obviously less than what
         | the public pricing on clouds is.
        
           | lossolo wrote:
           | And Meta is using a lot of GPUs for offline ML and online ML
           | features on Instagram, FB etc. So nothing is "wasted".
        
         | lovethevoid wrote:
         | > Meta's stock valuation has increased by approximately $162.63
         | billion
         | 
         | All thanks to their investments in VR! Wait guys where are you
         | going
        
         | kkielhofner wrote:
         | One of the things driving this crazy spend on AI infrastructure
         | by big tech is excess capital.
         | 
         | Big tech is getting increasing scrutiny by regulators, etc for
         | monopolistic/anticompetitive practices/etc[0]. From S&P:
         | 
         | "Regulatory scrutiny is likely to translate into fewer mega
         | deals, however. Adobe Inc. recently abandoned its $20 billion
         | acquisition of Figma Inc. in the face of ongoing opposition
         | from the UK's Competition and Markets Authority and the EU's
         | European Commission. While Microsoft Corp. was able to close
         | its $68.7 billion Activision Blizzard buy, it took nearly two
         | years to complete the deal amid an intense fight with the
         | regulators.
         | 
         | The harsh regulatory environment will continue to have a
         | chilling effect on large tech M&A, but strategic buyers are
         | likely to focus on smaller tuck-ins that do not tempt
         | regulators to intervene."
         | 
         | So instead of growing further by spend on acquiring/rolling out
         | new platforms to draw further scrutiny, they're shoveling piles
         | of cash towards other capital expenses (with accounting tricks)
         | that don't get further attention/scrutiny from regulators.
         | 
         | Meta doesn't use this infrastructure just for LLaMA - they get
         | to use these hundreds of millions of dollars of spend to
         | extract more value (deeper, not wider) from the users and
         | platforms they already have.
         | 
         | Case in point: AI generated ads[1]. There's a not-too-distant
         | future where the ads displayed on Facebook are an AI generated
         | video of you in a new Toyota (or whatever). In terms of even
         | open models Meta is much more than LLaMA. They have done a lot
         | with speech (seamless), vision (segment anything), and much
         | more.
         | 
         | That model training, inference, etc is running on these Nvidia
         | GPUs as well.
         | 
         | There is also a take from Reid Hoffman saying that buying
         | 100,000 GPUs or whatever is basically "table stakes" at this
         | point[2]. Boards, analysts, the market, etc says "What I know
         | for sure is this AI stuff needs Nvidia GPUs. Elon has 100k. How
         | many do we have?".
         | 
         | So it's also a Cold War arms race/missile gap scenario. Plus,
         | don't discount ego/"male anatomy measuring contest" that goes
         | on with these guys. Consider this story where a bunch of centi-
         | billionaires got together at Nobu to fight over Nvidia GPU
         | shipments[3].
         | 
         | [0] - https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-
         | insights...
         | 
         | [1] - https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/8/24265065/meta-ai-
         | edited-v...
         | 
         | [2] - https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-investor-
         | hoff...
         | 
         | [3] - https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-oracles-larry-
         | ellis...
        
         | abofh wrote:
         | SPY has gone from 404 to 579 in that timeframe - so meta lost
         | value and performance due to their choices? Or you're using a
         | terrible metric to judge things by.
        
         | hcc wrote:
         | The stock price is completely wrong, stock was around $170 back
         | in February 2023
        
         | norgie wrote:
         | > I don't want to do the math, so I'll ask Perplexity to look
         | it up
         | 
         | These numbers are totally wrong, and it takes about 30 seconds
         | to look it up. It closed at 589.95 on 2024-10-11 and 172.04 on
         | 2023-02-23. The other numbers appear to be wrong too.
        
           | loeg wrote:
           | I did a double-take at the quoted $500 price in 2023. The
           | real numbers strengthen the case for AI as a pump-the-stock
           | investment.
        
         | jauntywundrkind wrote:
         | Meta seems to - in my view correctly - understand that the risk
         | to Facebook & other Meta properties is someone else walking
         | away with great success, capturing the market for generative AI
         | & being left out.
         | 
         | They don't need to make money, increase their value. They need
         | to ward off existential risk. The best way to insure they
         | aren't locked out from the future is to keep the future open.
         | That's the only hope they have to maintain the locks they
         | already have on much of the information technology world.
        
         | asdff wrote:
         | I wonder how this math works in light of Moore's law? E.g say
         | it cost meta $320 million to train this model this year. How
         | much does it cost to train that model next year or the year
         | after instead? Is it significantly cheaper? Are the returns on
         | investment the same? Makes me think there is a business case in
         | watching someone spend a pile of money to train model X,
         | waiting to see if there's interest in the market in this model
         | X, then spend a comparatively smaller pile of money on the same
         | model X yourself taking advantage of lower future costs of
         | compute and undercut the original company hand over fist.
        
         | burkaman wrote:
         | Please don't post auto-generated text without checking it
         | yourself. It is almost always wrong, as it is here.
        
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