Is xAI a neocloud now?
Is xAI a neocloud now?
xAI 现在是一家“新云”（neocloud）公司吗？
On Wednesday, xAI and Anthropic announced a surprise partnership that has the Claude-maker buying out “all of the compute capacity at [xAI’s] Colossus 1 data center,” roughly 300MW that allowed Anthropic to immediately raise its usage limits. It’s a huge deal for xAI, likely worth billions of dollars. More importantly, it immediately monetized one of the company’s most impressive accomplishments, turning xAI from a consumer to a provider of compute. 周三，xAI 和 Anthropic 宣布了一项令人惊讶的合作：Claude 的开发商 Anthropic 将买断“xAI Colossus 1 数据中心的所有计算能力”。这大约 300 兆瓦的算力使 Anthropic 能够立即提高其使用上限。这对 xAI 来说是一笔巨额交易，价值可能高达数十亿美元。更重要的是，它立即将该公司最令人印象深刻的成就之一变现，使 xAI 从算力消费者转变为算力提供商。
It’s tempting to see the arrangement as a shot at OpenAI amid the ongoing lawsuit. But Musk’s explanation on X was that xAI had already moved training to a newer data center, Colossus 2, and xAI simply didn’t need them both. In the short term, there’s an obvious logic at work. xAI’s existing products are mostly focused on Grok, which has seen plummeting usage since the image generation debacles earlier this year. If xAI’s data center buildout is that much more than what Grok needs to operate, partnering with Anthropic adds a lot of green to the balance sheet. 在双方诉讼不断的背景下，人们很容易将此举视为对 OpenAI 的一次回击。但马斯克在 X 上解释称，xAI 已经将训练任务转移到了更新的数据中心 Colossus 2，xAI 根本不需要同时保留两个。从短期来看，这背后的逻辑显而易见。xAI 现有的产品主要集中在 Grok 上，而自今年早些时候图像生成功能出现问题以来，Grok 的使用率一直在暴跌。如果 xAI 的数据中心建设规模远超 Grok 的运营需求，那么与 Anthropic 的合作将为资产负债表增色不少。
This is especially useful as the company, now combined with SpaceX, speeds toward an IPO. More broadly, having Anthropic lined up as a customer makes it easier to believe that SpaceX’s orbital data center play might actually work. But beyond the short-term benefit, the Anthropic partnership sends an unusual message about where Elon Musk’s priorities really lie. It suggests the company’s real business may be more about building data centers than training AI models. 随着该公司现已与 SpaceX 合并并加速迈向 IPO，这一点尤为重要。从更广泛的角度来看，拥有 Anthropic 这样的客户，让人更容易相信 SpaceX 的轨道数据中心计划或许真的可行。但除了短期利益之外，与 Anthropic 的合作传递了一个不同寻常的信号，即埃隆·马斯克真正的重心所在。这表明该公司的核心业务可能更多在于建设数据中心，而非训练 AI 模型。
It’s rare to see a major tech company treat compute resources this way when companies like Google and Meta, who are also training models, are building more data centers. It’s an easy point to miss, because so many of these companies are working as enterprise AI vendors, online services, and cloud providers all at once. But when forced to make a choice between selling more available compute to customers and preserving some to build their own tools, they reliably choose door No. 2. 当谷歌和 Meta 等同样在训练模型的公司都在建设更多数据中心时，很少有大型科技公司会这样对待计算资源。这一点很容易被忽视，因为许多公司同时身兼企业 AI 供应商、在线服务商和云服务提供商多重角色。但当被迫在“向客户出售更多可用算力”和“保留算力以构建自有工具”之间做出选择时，它们总是会坚定地选择后者。
Just last month, Sundar Pichai admitted on a call that Google Cloud revenue was lower than it could have been because the company was “capacity constrained” — and when given the choice of renting out their GPUs or using them to develop AI products, Google chose the AI products. Facebook has faced a more extreme version of the same constraint, spinning up an entirely new cloud apparatus just to ensure they would have enough GPU power to chase Mark Zuckerberg’s AI ambition. As he put it when announcing Meta Compute in January, “How we engineer, invest, and partner to build this infrastructure will become a strategic advantage.” 就在上个月，桑达尔·皮查伊（Sundar Pichai）在电话会议中承认，谷歌云的收入低于预期，因为公司受到了“容量限制”——当面临出租 GPU 还是将其用于开发 AI 产品的选择时，谷歌选择了后者。Facebook 也面临着同样但更为极端的限制，他们甚至建立了一套全新的云架构，只为确保有足够的 GPU 算力来追逐马克·扎克伯格的 AI 野心。正如他在一月份宣布 Meta Compute 时所言：“我们如何通过工程、投资和合作来构建这种基础设施，将成为一种战略优势。”
The key word there is “strategic.” Both Zuckerberg and Pichai are looking toward a future where AI is powering the most popular and lucrative systems in the world. Computing power isn’t just a way to satisfy today’s inference demand, but to build tomorrow’s products — and running short on compute means missing out on that chance. By focusing on data centers (earthbound and otherwise), xAI is positioning itself more like a neocloud business: buying GPUs from Nvidia and renting them out to model developers like Anthropic. 其中的关键词是“战略”。扎克伯格和皮查伊都在展望未来，届时 AI 将驱动世界上最受欢迎和最赚钱的系统。计算能力不仅是满足当前推理需求的方式，更是构建未来产品的基石——算力短缺意味着错失良机。通过专注于数据中心（无论是地面还是其他形式），xAI 将自己定位得更像是一家“新云”企业：从英伟达购买 GPU，然后将其出租给像 Anthropic 这样的模型开发商。
It’s a far more difficult business, squeezed by both chip suppliers and the shifting cycles of demand. The valuations for most active neoclouds reflect that reality: xAI was valued at $230 billion in its January funding round; CoreWeave, which oversees a comparable quantity of computing power, is worth less than a third of that. Musk’s version of a neocloud is more ambitious, as you might expect. Some of the data centers might be in space — at least by 2035, if things go according to plan. xAI will be making its own chips at the Terafab, which will take away some but not all of Nvidia’s pricing power. But none of it changes the basic economics of the neocloud business. 这是一项艰巨得多的业务，受到芯片供应商和不断变化的需求周期的双重挤压。大多数活跃的“新云”公司的估值反映了这一现实：xAI 在一月份的融资轮中估值为 2300 亿美元；而拥有相当规模算力的 CoreWeave，其价值还不到前者的三分之一。正如你所料，马斯克版本的“新云”更具野心。如果一切按计划进行，到 2035 年，部分数据中心甚至可能位于太空。xAI 将在 Terafab 制造自己的芯片，这将削弱英伟达的部分定价权，但无法完全取代。然而，这一切都无法改变“新云”业务的基本经济逻辑。
As recently as the February all-hands, xAI had real ambitions in software. That was the presentation that unveiled the orbital data center project, but it also teased significant ambitions in coding (since bolstered by the Cursor partnership) and interesting ideas like leveraging computer use into full-scale digital twins (in the unfortunately named Macrohard project). These are the kind of long-horizon projects that need committed computing resources to succeed. As long as xAI is selling large quantities of compute to its competitors, it’s hard to think such new ambitions have much of a future. 就在二月份的全员大会上，xAI 在软件领域还有着真正的雄心。那次演示不仅揭开了轨道数据中心项目的面纱，还透露了在编程方面的重大抱负（此后通过与 Cursor 的合作得到了加强），以及一些有趣的想法，例如利用计算机使用能力构建全尺寸数字孪生（在那个命名不幸的 Macrohard 项目中）。这些都是需要投入大量计算资源才能成功的长远项目。只要 xAI 继续向竞争对手出售大量算力，就很难想象这些新抱负会有多大的未来。