EDITOR’ S QUESTION
AMID THE AI GOLD RUSH – CAN GPUAAS RESTORE MARKET BALANCE?
Jeff Hinkle, Founder & CEO, Ionstream, says the AI goldrush is great for business and consumers – but demand for enterprise-grade GPUs is outstripping supply.
Big tech is hungry for AI hardware. Its appetite is growing at an extraordinary rate for GPUs which are now the most expensive, and most coveted pieces of technology on the market.
To understand the scale at which AI infrastructure is expanding, you only need to look at Elon Musk’ s xAI.
According to a recent press release, xAI has acquired a 1 million-square-foot piece of land in Southwest Memphis to increase its AI data center footprint – in addition to its primary Memphis site and a second new data center in Atlanta.
The AI goldrush is great for business and consumers. But there is a problem; demand for enterprisegrade GPUs is outstripping supply. Only last month, OpenAI’ s Sam Altman took to X to complain his company is“ out of GPUs” which slowed down the rollout of ChatGPT 4.5.
What’ s more, smaller tech companies and AI-focused startups are finding themselves at the back of the lunch line, eagerly waiting for access to the latest hardware – or paying above the odds to get it earlier. In a game with first mover advantage, you can appreciate the unfairness of the current landscape.
As part of this remarkable expansion, xAI plans to increase the number of NVIDIA GPUs it owns in 2025 to 1 million – up from 100,000 last year. Meta, OpenAI, and Microsoft( to name a few) are also on hardware spending sprees.
As part of this remarkable expansion, xAI plans to increase the number of NVIDIA GPUs it owns in 2025 to 1 million.
Choosing the right deployment model – virtualized or bare metal cloud?
With AI models growing exponentially in size, developers need powerful computing solutions that won’ t break the bank. In response, traditional cloud options – Cloud GPU and GPU-as-a-service( GPUaaS) – as well as bare metal cloud are fast-emerging services, providing scalable, high-performance computing without delayed access when supply is tight.
Essentially, these services allow users to access and deploy GPUs in the cloud rather than purchasing and maintaining them on-site. Providers have strong relationships with vendors that can open access to
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