Happy Saturday everybody!
We’ve got a two part story for you this weekend from reporter Sruthi Pinnamaneni.
Tech billionaires have made an enormous bet on AI, the biggest bet that tech has made on anything in a very long time. Reporter Sruthi Pinnamaneni goes on a journey – from Data Center Alley to the shadow of Colossus – to see what the money’s being spent on, and to learn what happens if things go wrong.
In part two of our story about Elon Musk’s growing data center empire, we visit the battle between people in Memphis and xAI. And we try to understand a strange, untested assumption at the heart of the AI financing boom.
Further reading
How Elon Musk’s Supercomputer Freaked Out AI Rivals - Anissa Gardizy
A YouTube video showing the inside of Colossus 1
XAI’s Unusual Dealmaking to Fund Musk’s Colossus 2 - Miles Kruppa
Sam Hardiman’s reporting on Colossus 1 & 2, Sam Hardiman’s X account.
This didn’t make it into the story but Sruthi really enjoyed this WSJ article about the conference in ‘The Big Short’ drawing record crowds this year - They Crashed the Economy in 2008. Now They’re Back and Bigger Than Ever.
Why the deep learning boom caught almost everyone by surprise - Timothy B. Lee
Hope you all enjoy this one, a lot of work went into it. A question for you this week — where are you on the general fear versus optimism gradient on AI? And (crucially) how different is that from where you were a year ago?
See you next week with a new one,
PJ
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