The OpenAI Mafia is Racing to Bigger AI Supercomputers

Anthropic Enterprise, SSI Funding, xAI "Colossus" AI Supercomputer - and what it all means.

Hey Everyone,

This week there’s been some pivotal AI news that might shape the decade ahead. I don’t say this lightly, and hear me out.

The OpenAI Mafia is flexing its influence at SSI, Anthropic and xAI and in ways few saw coming. The term "OpenAI Mafia" refers to a group of former OpenAI employees who have left the company to start their own ventures, often in the field of artificial intelligence.

OpenAI whatever it becomes, has been an incredible generator of new companies and incubator for builders with a knack for getting funding. Many of those in AI are coming to the foreground in the mid to late 2020s. OAI Mafia firms such as Anthropic, xAI and SSI might overtake the likes of Google, Microsoft and Meta in their influence on the future of AI in the 2030s.

• Anthropic

• SSI

• xAI

• Perplexity (it turns out the most famous Gen AI startups are all splinter startups from former OpenAI employees).

AI Datacenter Superiority will become ‘Divine’

However to remain at the bleeding edge of LLMs, these dark horses must gain access to the biggest AI supercomputers. Feel the AGI, is actually about scale.

AI Supercomputer compute is becoming so important, some techies are equating it with a kind of reverence for what AI might become.

The Race to Compute

Colossus is the name xAI gives to its AI supercomputer that isn’t quite finished being hooked up but boasts a bigger cluster than even OpenAI has access to.

AI Supercomputers or gigacenters of compute will become so much more massive in the 2025 to 2030 period, so much more intensive in energy consumption and the AI chips Nvidia produces so much better, not to mention the AI capex required by BigTech that will reach previously unimaginable heights. This will be either the most foolish bet in the history of technology or the real race to AI Supremacy of the next decade. Only a select few companies, or even countries, will be in the running.

• This week’s AI News is demonstrative of the intangibles and surprising evolution of compute scale in the years ahead that might lead to unexpected outcomes and unintended consequences in the future of AI.

• Having a holistic macro understanding of these trends is therefore necessary to adapt to what it is coming.

The Path to AI Supercomputers of Scale