Can any provider survive without ads? These AI firms are propped up by VC money, they need to create profits at some point and ads is the most surefire way to do this
> Can any provider survive without ads? These AI firms are propped up by VC money ...
Google's Gemini is SOTA and Google is valued at 4 trillion. Now it's ironic of course: Google became a 4 trillion thanks to ads. Which now allows Google to serve no ads in Gemini. It doesn't matter to Google that they're operating at a loss with Gemini: they can throw hundreds of billions at the problem over a few years, serving zero ads, while people make fun of the AI firms showing ads, like ChadGPT.
OpenAI is not just facing Anthropic and its "no ads" ad, it's also facing "we're a 4 trillion company and can run Gemini at a loss for decades" Google, "we pretend we'll put datacenters in space so that xAI can tap into the SpaceX warchest", openweight models which anybody can run on rented hardware for next to nothing compared to ChadGPT's price, etc.
It doesn't matter if others can survive without ads: all that matters is that they can survive long enough without ads so that OpenAI doesn't become another trillion dollar company.
Electricity generation is the constraining factor, but the sun does not turn off in space. xAI data centers in space drives cost to zero, even with inferior models.
Solar in space produces 30% more power, and doesn't turn off at night, meaning you don't need batteries. That means power costs, say, 25% of what it currently does measured against terrestrial solar and batteries.
The 75% electricity discount needs to pay for launch vehicles, specially designed satellites, and the inability to service the hardware or resell it when it's EOL for the data center.
It's a gamble. Maybe it'll turn out to be a slight edge, maybe it'll turn out to fail, but it's not a sure thing and it certainly isn't going to hugely decrease the cost.
Especially since they're competing against Google and their custom designed hardware that's far more power efficient for AI. It's not clear that NVIDIA running at a 75% dollar discount beats Google's best TPU in compute per dollar.
Time is a factor here. You need to launch each of these into space. Now, in the time it took to send those satellites up into space, how many datacenters and how many solar panels and how many GPUs could you have set up and built and had operational? If latency isn't a factor, why bother building them in the US? Build them in Iceland where they have cheap geothermal! The amount of rockets you'd need to launch to fit the same number of GPUs as a datacenter is definitely quite a few. SpaceX has done 165 flights in 2025. How many datacenters or solar farms or battery plants can you build in the time it'd take to launch 1 datacenter worth of satellites?
I'm entirely ignoring the problem of cooling in space (which is a huge problem!), and of how much it'd cost to launch the satellites.
For the price of launching a datacenter into space, you could probably build one in NA, one in Europe, and one in Asia and solve the "sun sets" problem that way with the side benefit of having excess capacity you can turn on by paying for local non-solar electricity.
You are going to be utterly shocked when you realize that solar panels work on the ground, too. You can buy so many batteries, and so many geographically separated locations for your panels, for the price of launching a datacenter into space.
TacticalCoder|20 days ago
Google's Gemini is SOTA and Google is valued at 4 trillion. Now it's ironic of course: Google became a 4 trillion thanks to ads. Which now allows Google to serve no ads in Gemini. It doesn't matter to Google that they're operating at a loss with Gemini: they can throw hundreds of billions at the problem over a few years, serving zero ads, while people make fun of the AI firms showing ads, like ChadGPT.
OpenAI is not just facing Anthropic and its "no ads" ad, it's also facing "we're a 4 trillion company and can run Gemini at a loss for decades" Google, "we pretend we'll put datacenters in space so that xAI can tap into the SpaceX warchest", openweight models which anybody can run on rented hardware for next to nothing compared to ChadGPT's price, etc.
It doesn't matter if others can survive without ads: all that matters is that they can survive long enough without ads so that OpenAI doesn't become another trillion dollar company.
unleaded|20 days ago
cabernal|20 days ago
pgt|20 days ago
Electricity generation is the constraining factor, but the sun does not turn off in space. xAI data centers in space drives cost to zero, even with inferior models.
I see no other future than SpaceXai winning.
margalabargala|20 days ago
Solar in space produces 30% more power, and doesn't turn off at night, meaning you don't need batteries. That means power costs, say, 25% of what it currently does measured against terrestrial solar and batteries.
The 75% electricity discount needs to pay for launch vehicles, specially designed satellites, and the inability to service the hardware or resell it when it's EOL for the data center.
It's a gamble. Maybe it'll turn out to be a slight edge, maybe it'll turn out to fail, but it's not a sure thing and it certainly isn't going to hugely decrease the cost.
Especially since they're competing against Google and their custom designed hardware that's far more power efficient for AI. It's not clear that NVIDIA running at a 75% dollar discount beats Google's best TPU in compute per dollar.
Moomoomoo309|19 days ago
I'm entirely ignoring the problem of cooling in space (which is a huge problem!), and of how much it'd cost to launch the satellites.
logicx24|20 days ago
freetanga|20 days ago
Guess he is not as bright as he thinks he is.
AlexandrB|20 days ago
LeoPanthera|20 days ago