[Sol-]

xAI has shown this to be quite lucrative. And it seems to even make some sense - if the contract can be ended on relatively short notice, you basically have the capacity on stand-by if you ever need it yourself (accumulating GPUs is not trivial), but can monetize it if you don't need it.

Though it's probably a bad sign generally that you can't capitalize on all the GPUs you've acquired.

[khurs]

>xAI has shown this to be quite lucrative.

The demand is likely short term till the renter can ramp up their own centres/find better deals.

[re-thc]

> xAI has shown this to be quite lucrative

Come back when you have actual numbers on dollars spent, interest rates and the time spent.

[disgruntledphd2]

To be fair to meta, they've been running data centers for almost two decades now, so they'd be in a different position to XAI.

[rightbyte]

> (accumulating GPUs is not trivial)

Also like accumulating milk rather than gold.

A approximate failure rate I have been able to find is: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...

Which would imply 42% loss over 5 years if linear attrition at 10% failure rate per gpu year.

(((1-(148+72+19+17+6)÷16 384)^(1÷54))^(365)

Dunno how many faults are repairable in practice. The failure rates of CPUs were alot lower for comparison.

[wmf]

Newer generations are supposed to be more reliable. You're also not counting warranty replacement.

[InsideOutSanta]

> xAI has shown this to be quite lucrative

How do you know this? Have they released any numbers?

[Sol-]

I think the SpaceX IPO showed them to rent the clusters for billions a month

[InsideOutSanta]

That doesn't mean they're lucrative, though. They cost tens of billions to build and huge sums to run. Even if I believe that they are now running profitably, that doesn't mean they're "quite lucrative" overall.

SpaceX's numbers show xAI increasing its losses over time. In 2025, xAI lost $6.4 billion on $3.2 billion. In 2026, xAI posted a $2.47 billion operating loss in the first quarter alone.