[irishcoffee]

I believe you've described "investing with a hope for a profitable return" which is usually the point of investing.

Circular investing is a thing that is happening with all of these companies related to language models. Google hoping for a ROI isn't a great example of that.

[olyjohn]

Since when is leasing capacity in a datacenter considered investing?

[nonethewiser]

>Since when is leasing capacity in a datacenter considered investing?

You misunderstand. The comment notes Google's initial shares, which is referring to a roughly 6.1% stake in SpaceX.

[WorldPeas]

it's about squatting a percent that cannot be taken, there are many companies I know of who have large capacity reservations they don't use only because they hope to use it /soon/ and don't want to deal with cold start times. I remember when one used to be able to start a lambda labs on-demand h100 job and it'd start in 30 minutes, now you'd be lucky if it happened the same day

[irishcoffee]

Why does one lease something? To provide value equal or better to the cost, no?

[fwip]

If I lease an apartment for two years, that's not an investment.

[dmix]

In accounting terms it’s not an investment it’s an operating expense or in your example a personal expense, but if you leased a property and operated a business (ie an AirBnB for an apartment) it could be considered as part of an investment as it’s a means to make a profit.

[nemomarx]

that would be an investment in your own business, not in your landlord right?

[dmix]

The landlords business is the rent, your business goal would be making a profit more than the lease. This is pretty simple stuff

[phil21]

I dunno, I’ve never leased space in a datacenter without considering it an investment.

And one I expected to perform significantly better than either the risk free rate or just passive investment into the stock market.

Same reason I invest in capital equipment to put into the space I lease.

[nemomarx]

Buying the 5 percent stake is investing, but is paying them to be sure they can IPO normal? It reminds me more of Microsoft paying apple or Google paying Firefox or something.