Platformonomics TGIF is a weekly roll-up of links, comments on those links, and perhaps a little too much tugging on my favorite threads.
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You Can’t Spell “Glue on Pizza” Without AGI
Hypothesis: AGI is already here. It is intentionally doing stupid things to conceal its presence and undermine the credibility of its doomer opponents.
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Who’s Getting the GPUs? Reply Hazy, Try Again Edition
I’m still not sure who NVIDIA’s biggest customers were in their most recent quarter. They had two direct and two indirect customers each taking around 10% of the business, with one of the indirect customers (likely a cloud) buying through a direct. My guess is the latter was Microsoft, but I’m not as confident as I was that Microsoft was their biggest customer for the six prior quarters. Thanks to everyone who joined the mad speculation.
Who’s Getting the GPUs? Elon Shell Game Edition
Fractional CEO Elon Musk got caught moving GPUs between his three, sub-scale AI efforts. And only a month after we predicted this:
Platformonomics ClownWatch™ at some point is going to have to look at Elon’s three inadequately funded AI efforts (Tesla, Twitter and xAI). Even combined they’re not in the game. Maybe that will motivate more Elon corporate governance shenanigans?
Elon responded: “Corporate governance is not going to get us to Mars”.
But kudos for Starship’s recent return flight.
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Platformonomics ClownWatch™: Tesla, Useful Idiots, Fellow Travelers and Unregistered Foreign Agents: Elon Musk Part II, Useful Idiots, Fellow Travelers and Unregistered Foreign Agents: Elon/Twitter, Company Killed By Its Customers, Elon Cashes in All the Trust He’s Banked with Twitter, Do Not Take a Dependency on Elon Musk: Chapter 147, Do Not Take a Dependency on Elon Musk: Chapter 148, Do Not Take a Dependency on Elon Musk: Chapter 149
Antitrust Incoherence: Isn’t Market Division Illegal?
When will regulators go after these back room deals that carve up the regulation of markets?
“Big is Bad” is still a terrible foundation for antitrust. I’m assuming that if anyone was complaining about DGX Cloud specifically, the EU would have already issued a press release.
You May Not Be Interested in Geopolitics, But Geopolitics is Interested in You
The U.S. government forbids Nvidia from selling some of its most advanced artificial intelligence chips to customers in China. But it doesn’t stop Chinese firms from buying or renting Nvidia’s chips if they’re used within the U.S.
Some big Chinese tech firms have taken advantage of that loophole, or tried to. ByteDance, owner of TikTok, has been renting Nvidia’s best chips from Oracle for AI computing, according to two people with knowledge of the arrangement.
Analysts Gonna Analyst
I’ve seen some pretty embarrassing analyst reports over the years, but this might be a new low. But credit where credit is due: one of the few pockets of excellence left at IBM is browbeating press and analysts.
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This Week in Securities Fraud, IBM and the Art of Misleading Investors, Last IBM Strategic Imperative Bites the Dust, IBM’s “Cloud” Business (or Lack Thereof), Tweetstorm Digest: Reactions to Barron’s “IBM’s Reboot” Story, IBM’s Lost Decade, Follow the CAPEX: The Clown Car Race Checkered Flag, Introducing Platformonomics ClownWatch™,
EU Insanity: Ye Olde Memory Hole
Regulators in Europe, meanwhile, are looking to apply existing digital law to the new platforms, which could mean getting AI to “forget” information it has memorized about people.
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EU Suffering From Premature Regulation, BREAKING: European Union Designated an Advanced Persistent Threat, UK Announces Big Tech Struggle Sessions “For The Children”, EU Announces DMA Struggle Sessions, EU Announces Meta Struggle Sessions, EU Insanity: Regulatory Contortions, EU Insanity: Not Learning From Regulatory Failure, EU Announces DMA Struggle Sessions, EU Insanity: AI Regulatory Suicide, EU Insanity: AI Energy Suicide, EU Insanity: The Kafka Singularity, EU Insanity: AI Energy Suicide (Part Deux), EU Insanity: Mistral Edition, Move Fast and Regulate Things (You Don’t Understand), The EU Will Continue to Fiddle While Rome Burns, When “Move Fast and Regulate Things” Breaks Down, AI Regulation: Move Fast and Regulate Things
Oracle Sends Two Racks to Morocco
Racks? Regions? So easy to confuse.
Software Migration Alert: PowerSchool
When private equity rolls up, you should flee for the hills.
