Big Tech threw a fortune at cloud computing. It looks like a blip next to this AI spending storm.

They’re spending a lot by any measure.

8/8/24 10:39AM

We all know big tech companies are spending a lot of money investing in AI infrastructure and that capital expenditures are expected to keep growing. But how does this compare to previous investments in physical assets, namely cloud computing, when they were also building out data centers?

We took a look at capex over time for Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta, and adjusted it for inflation. We then flagged when these companies launched their cloud businesses versus when they began talking about AI capex in earnings calls.

For all of those companies, spending on physical assets for their cloud computing businesses took years to ramp up. Recent AI infrastructure spending grew to record levels much more quickly.

For Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta, capex has exploded to record levels since they began investing in generative AI in earnest.

While Amazon’s spending is relatively high compared to historical levels, it hasn’t yet matched levels seen during the pandemic, when the company quickly doubled its fulfillment center footprint to try and meet demand from a populace stuck at home and ordering online.

Jon Keegan7h

OpenAI’s hot Sora video app is a copyright lawsuit waiting to happen

OpenAI has generated some serious buzz surrounding its new Sora video generation app. The app is currently No. 3 on the iOS free app leaderboards, even though it’s invitation-only for the time being.

But users have been flooding social media with videos generated by Sora, and in addition to a “Skibidi Toilet” Sam Altman and the OpenAI CEO dressed as a Nazi, the app is able to create videos featuring iconic characters from Disney, Nintendo, and Paramount Skydance.

On the system card for the Sora 2 AI model (which powers the Sora app), OpenAI says it was trained on things found on the internet:

“Sora 2 was trained on diverse datasets, including information that is publicly available on the internet, information that we partner with third parties to access, and information that our users or human trainers and researchers provide or generate.”

This seems like an invitation for a big copyright lawsuit, along the lines of the one Disney, Dreamworks, and NBCUniversal recently filed against AI image generator Midjourney.

But OpenAI is trying to flip the responsibility of protecting copyrighted material to the intellectual property owners themselves. According to The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI is allowing copyrighted material in Sora by default, unless copyright holders opt out of the service.

The courts will have to decide if this novel approach to intellectual copyright law works, but government regulators may not be that big of a problem, as Altman has made sure OpenAI is in the good graces of the Trump administration. If OpenAI has to pay up to copyright holders after a lawsuit, what’s a few billion dollars here or there when you’re raising so much capital?

OpenAI’s AI video app stirs copyright questions, pumping out videos of Mario and Pikachu

On the system card for the Sora 2 AI model (which powers the Sora app), OpenAI says it was trained on things found on the internet:

“Sora 2 was trained on diverse datasets, including information that is publicly available on the internet, information that we partner with third parties to access, and information that our users or human trainers and researchers provide or generate.”

This seems like an invitation for a big copyright lawsuit, along the lines of the one Disney, Dreamworks, and NBCUniversal recently filed against AI image generator Midjourney.

Rani Molla

Tesla delivered way more Teslas than it produced last quarter

That’s helping it claw its way through its surplus.

GOP Lawmakers In D.C. Poised To Vote On Waivers That Allow California To Set Own Emissions Standards

Tension emerges between Meta’s AI teams

Discontent between Meta’s AI research teams is growing, according to a report by The Information, at a critical time for Meta’s effort to get back into the AI race.

Jon Keegan11h

Rani Molla

Mon-AI Mon-AI Mon-AI Mon-AI

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OpenAI beats SpaceX as most valuable private company, at $500 billion valuation

It also reached that valuation very quickly.