alt Hacker NewsAren't open-weight models good for Nvidia's business? Chinese labs releasing models that people can run themselves on Nvidia GPUs creates more potential buyers of Nvidia GPUs.
I don't think it's good for Nvidia if everyone has to go through a few labs APIs to get access to AI inference.
It makes sense to me why they would benefit from chinese labs having more compute.
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While yes, they also have interest in open weight, it does increase their market after all, I'd be surprised if that was on the same level, given they are extending mass credits to US frontier labs and neoclouds on condition that they'd purchase their GPUs and even provide revenue guarantees.
That is something they simply cannot do with Chinese entities. Allegedly smuggling GPUs may be feasible, but that'd probably ruffle to many feathers in both the US and Mainland China, especially as we know they will pop a bubble to their own (temporary) detriment if it gets out of control as seen with Evergrande a few years ago.
Beyond all of that, would that juice be worth the squeeze? Bypass massive sanctions, risk your companies future and standing on the global stage just to provide foreign labs with your GPUs illegally and create a comparatively negligible added demand for your accelerators when compared with the (predominantly) closed-model-labs? That seems very high risk, very low reward in my eyes.
In the long term, the strategic interest of Nvidia is to avoid having to deal with a business entity that is too powerful.
NVIDIA is valued far in excess of potential GPU sales. They need the hype train. Running afoul of the US government is bad for the hype train.
I wish for US to win the Chinese race if there's one. I would agree that the Chinese getting access to GPUs, building models, making them open weight and also sharing has really pushed the American labs. Without Chinese models, we would probably be 1 year behind where we currently are. Competition is a healthy thing. This competition has increased intelligence so fast and created ridiculous demand on hardware. So it's been great for Nvidia and their stock. I don't know what Jensen knows nor do I believe he could have anticipated how the field would play out. Whatever happens, it's been one heckuva ride for him. Unfortunately there are many people that would love to get into his position, the pay is going to be delicious...