Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Conrad: GPU businesses succeed as pure real estate or pure software, not both

Evan Conrad · SF Compute: Commoditizing Compute · Apr 11, 2025 · at 18:35

Evan Conrad discusses business models in AI infrastructure, comparing pure compute hosts with software platforms.

0:00 / 0:26exact quote · 26.7s
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“The GPU clouds are fantastic real estate businesses. If you treat them like real estate businesses, you will make a lot of money. The, Cloud services you can make on that, all the software you want to make on that, you can do that fantastically. If you don't own the underlying hardware, if you mix these businesses together, you get shot in the head. But if you combine, if you split them and that's what the market does, it helps you split them. It allows you to buy like later on services, but just buy from the market. You can make lots of money.”

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