What’s behind the massive AI data center headlines?
Silicon Valley flooded the news this week with headlines about wild AI infrastructure investments.
Nvidia said it would invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI. Then OpenAI said it would build out five more Stargate AI data centers with Oracle and SoftBank, adding gigawatts of new capacity online in the coming years. And it was later revealed that Oracle sold $18 billion in bonds to pay for these data centers.
On their own, each deal is dizzying in scale. But in aggregate, we see how Silicon Valley is moving heaven and earth to give OpenAI enough power to train and serve future versions of ChatGPT.
This week on Equity, Anthony Ha and I (Max Zeff) go beyond the headlines to break down what’s really going on in these AI infrastructure deals.
Rather conveniently, OpenAI also gave the world a glimpse this week of a power-intensive feature it could serve more broadly if it had access to more AI data centers.
The company launched Pulse — a new feature in ChatGPT that works overnight to deliver personalized morning briefings for users. The experience feels similar to a news app or a social feed — something you check first thing in the morning — but doesn’t have posts from other users or ads (yet).
Pulse is part of a new class of OpenAI products that work independently, even when users aren’t in the ChatGPT app. The company would like to deliver a lot more of these features and roll them out to free users, but they’re limited by the number of computer servers available to them. OpenAI said it can only offer Pulse to its $200-a-month Pro subscribers right now due to capacity constraints.
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The real question is whether features like Pulse are worth the hundreds of billions of dollars being invested in AI data centers to support OpenAI. The feature looks cool and all, but that’s a tall order.
Watch the full episode to hear more about the massive AI infrastructure investments reshaping Silicon Valley, TikTok’s ownership saga, and the policy changes affecting tech’s biggest players.
Maxwell Zeff is a senior reporter at TechCrunch specializing in AI. Previously with Gizmodo, Bloomberg, and MSNBC, Zeff has covered the rise of AI and the Silicon Valley Bank crisis. He is based in San Francisco. When not reporting, he can be found hiking, biking, and exploring the Bay Area’s food scene.
You can contact or verify outreach from Maxwell by emailing maxwell.zeff@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at mzeff.88 on Signal.
