Elon's $3bn AI shopping spree

23rd July 2024

Sam Volkering

Jul 23, 2024

Welcome to AI Collision 💥,

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In today’s collision between AI and our world:

Elon's spending big
AI's perfectly fine use
Silence of the Yams

If that’s enough to get the cash money flowing, read on…

AI Collision 💥

The "average" Nvidia H100 GPU is going to set you back about $30,000 (give or take $5,000 – $10,000).

For that kind of money, you also choose from...

19,333 Greggs sausage rolls
A brand-new Vauxhall Corsa
7,200 Bridgestone Tour B RX golf balls
7½ Zone 1 - 6 Transport for London annual railcards

Or of course just one H100 GPU.

But what if you needed more? What if you, say, needed 100,000 H11 GPUs?

Well of course that would mean around $3 billion you'd need to cough up.

In case you were wondering...

1.93 billion Greggs sausage rolls
100,000 brand new Vauxhall Corsas
720 million Bridgestone Tour B RX golf balls
750,000 Zone 1 - 6 Transport for London annual railcards

Or...enough grunt power to train the, "most powerful AI training cluster in the world!"

That's what Elon just posted yesterday.

"RDMA" means remote direct memory access. Which is a technology term for a fast and efficient network of memory where data transfer is done directly without another machine's CPU or operating system.

In short, it's a highly powerful system of GPUs that are all made by Nvidia. So, when I see a stock like Nvidia go from a high of around $135 to about $115 in the space of a few trading days I ask myself...

Why? Is the market thinking this is the kind of stock that's overvalued? And then I look at something like Elon's post and think to myself...

Why? Is the world's most illustrious tech billionaire spending billions on Nvidia hardware for his AI project? And why is he buying the gear all from just one company, Nvidia.

Makes sense to me that if Elon is still aiming hard at Nvidia, then their future revenues still aren't properly priced in to the stock.

And while it's tempting to think it can't go up forever, I ask myself a question that maybe you should too...

Why not?

AI gone wild 🤪

FINALLY!

We have a decent use for AI...

I must say, Putin in a Louis Vuitton gown probably made my day...until it got to Bill Clinton in a blue dress 😂 😂 😂

Anyway, best see for yourself below,

This wasn't Elon's doing I might add, but he did share it around which is how it ended up on most people's X.com feed.

Now I must say, the idea of an AI fashion show like this is very funny, but I think it tells a deeper story about the direction of the fashion industry.

That we'll begin to see the integration of AI technology into everything from design and display through to the consumer experience at the retail point of sale.

We've seen how online shopping and fast fashion has evolved over the years. And also seen how companies that look like deeply entrenched stalwarts of the industry can crash and burn, ASOS and Burberry being two examples of that.

I think those that can embrace AI to enhance the experience for the shopper and consumer, will be those that rise hardest and fastest, and fend off the challenges from fast moving (and questionable practicing) companies like Temu.

Fashion + AI...maybe that's one of the big areas of opportunity in the market that no one's quite looking at hard enough…

Boomers & Busters 💰

AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week).

man in black suit jacket and black pants figurine

Boom 📈

Zeta Global Holdings (NYSE:ZETA) up 16%
iRobot Corp (NASDAQ:IRBT) up 9%
Cyngn (NASDAQ:CYN) up 8%

Bust 📉

AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) down 14%
Taiwan Semiconductor (NYSE:TSM) down 10%
BigBear.ai (NYSE:BBAI) down 9%

From the hive mind 🧠

This is quite an interesting piece as an adaptation of a speech given by Daniel Kelhmann. Considering the terrifyingly exciting and fearful aspect of AI is a responsibility of all of us, and this I think does a great job of balancing out both sides of the coin.
Considering that it seems like both side of the US political spectrum want to enact trade war with China, this should be interesting...Maybe Nvidia's "China Chips" will come with a side of spyware?
So if you're swiping content from YouTube to train your AI model, then it's almost certain our future will end up with Mr. Beast as the President of the United States.

Artificial Polltelligence 🗳️ The Results

The opening of Parliament last week was signified by The King's Speech. A speech read by the King but written by the government.

A fascinating look at the Monarchy in full flight it was full of all the pomp and ceremony as you'd expect from Great Britain.

And the speech itself was a bit dull. But that doesn't mean the event itself wasn't full of grandeur.

Still, it's a strange situation when all the royal "stuff" is on display. And as a non-British native, I always wonder what the people of Great Britain think of the Monarchy from time to time, especially when the extravagance is on full display.

Hence our poll from last week...and here are the results,