I'm confused, what industry knowledge or specialty does OpenAI have to build chips?
They're a software company that works higher on the stack unless working on cutting AI has given them an edge on chip design.
They're a software company that works higher on the stack unless working on cutting AI has given them an edge on chip design.
Google at least has relied on broadcom for building their TPUs: https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/22/google_broadcom_tpus/
Looking at how Nvidia share prices developed in the last 12 months should be reason alone to enter the AI accelerator business. And OpenAI does have software experts and a major component of Nvidia's success in AI is that they have a major advantage in software compared to their competitors (the hardware advantage isn't that large). Furthermore, there is Google's "We have no moat, and neither does OpenAI" memo: OpenAI definitely needs to strengthen its moat.
But of course, doing research with pytorch is not the same as developing driver code for some hardware bus or scheduling algorithms.
Which raises more questions than it answers. Why does OpenAI even need to be involved -- is this a common situation?
I would think the manufacturers would anticipate the huge impending demand for chips and raise the necessary investments to expand themselves.