It was another big week of event coverage for theCUBE, with Cloudera Evolve24 and Teradata Possible among the notable happenings. Those events, along with news such as the recent CoreWeave funding, were big subjects for theCUBE Research industry analysts John Furrier (pictured, left) and Dave Vellante (right) to dive into on the latest episode of the CUBE Podcast.
Last week, CoreWeave, Inc., a cloud provider of graphics cards for artificial intelligence workloads, said it added a $650 million credit line led by major investment firms to scale its global operations. But the real story here is that in 18 months, they’ve raised $12 billion, according to Furrier.
“TensorWave [Inc.], another company that we covered on SiliconANGLE, I met some of the guys in Seattle last week, they only raised $45 million,” Furrier said. “Million, not billion.”
CoreWeave funding sets the table
The CoreWeave funding really puts horses on the track now, according to Furrier. Competition is heating up.
“Remember [in a previous episode of theCUBE Podcast] … I was kind of joking about The Big Short, the movie, the housing crisis, and implying there might be a [graphics processing unit] crisis in the sense of everybody’s buying, buying, buying, and then, OK, it crashes,” Furrier said.
There’s a revision to consider now, according to Furrier. Everyone is still buying, but they may not have other important elements.
“‘I don’t have power, I can’t run them at scale, I don’t have the software, and now there’s new stuff here.’ You’re seeing kind of like the next evolution of — I won’t say Moore’s law — but natural price performance coming in, and competition,” Furrier said.
When it comes to the CoreWeave funding, it’s important to note that debt is dangerous, according to Furrier. But the $12 billion in equity also represents a lot of cash.
“The clock’s on, and we’re going to see where the [return on investment] comes from, where the results are going to come from,” Furrier said.
Thoughts on a possible Google breakup
Last week, news landed that the U.S. Justice Department could ask a federal court to break up Google LLC, information that was disclosed in a filing. Reports of such a move had swirled for weeks.
“Each time a big dominant company comes out, some bureaucrat says, ‘We got to break them up,’” Vellante said.
It’s a conversation that has taken place in the past with IBM Corp. and AT&T Inc. But AT&T was, in fact, broken up, Vellante noted.
“[Federal Trade Commission Chair] Lina Khan uses that — I always call it revisionist history. But I ask you, John, what really changed the network? What really disrupted the network?” Vellante said. “It wasn’t the breakup of AT&T, it was wireless networks, it was the shift of practice.”
The government just comes in a day late and a dollar short, according to Furrier. It may be that things are just too late in the game.
“They should have done the work on the front end if they were going to do anything. They tend to react to what they think is perceived power, but the game’s already over,” Furrier said. “If it, all things considered, was a simple static market, that’d be OK, but it’s not. The market’s changing.”
The debate around AI and climate change
For months, debate has been raging over how AI could help or hinder global climate change efforts. It’s a conversation that has come up often at events for Vellante and Furrier.
“I think AI will be a better mechanism for reducing energy. Again, the thesis is, do you focus on revenue or costs, if you think about business,” Furrier said. “Here, they’re looking at it the same way by saying, ‘Look, we’re focused on climate change. Let’s get the AI up and running … just get the AI up, and then over time, AI will help us use less energy.’”
It’s an interesting way to approach the problem, according to Furrier. It’s drawn more into focus given how solutions to climate change are playing out on a global scale right now.
“We’re like on a snail’s pace right now it feels like … how do we fix it? How do you create fairness around the globe when you have different countries that have different standards?” Furrier said.
China is currently building more factories and cities than anyone else, according to Furrier. That means that even if the United States was doing its best, they might still not be tipping the scales.
“I think in general, the way I would look at it, again, this is an industry problem,” he said.
Here’s the full theCUBE Pod episode:
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