A crypto billionaire’s nonprofit buys $500 million of AI data center chips. A nonprofit foundation with Jed McCaleb’s support purchased the sophisticated processors from Nvidia (NVDA.O.) for about $500 million. The firm intends to lease processing capacity to businesses for artificial intelligence initiatives.
In an interview with Reuters, Eric Park, the CEO of Voltage Park, an AI cloud computing company, revealed that the company had 24,000 Nvidia H100 processors.
To deal with the scarcity of AI chips, the operation intends to provide low-cost AI computing for both the short and long term.
“It’s our belief that basically the current ecosystem for machine learning is broken,” Park stated.
Voltage Park intends to install Nvidia AI chip clusters in Virginia, Washington, and Texas. According to Park, it has some operations and plans to ultimately deploy the 24,000 Nvidia chips by the end of February.
Demand for Nvidia’s cutting-edge AI silicon surged after the introduction of OpenAI’s ChatGPT last year, as companies rushed to get chips to fuel their aspirations in AI.
Competition from Intel, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O.), and other startups is available in the form of highly sought-after AI processors.
As the creator of Mt. Gox, Ripple, and Stellar, three well-known cryptocurrency startups, McCaleb accumulated a fortune. The creators of Ripple got 20 billion XRP, a cryptocurrency valued at around $80 billion at its height, in exchange for developing a blockchain.
Voltage Park, a business in San Mateo, California, is the sole property of the charity Navigation Fund, which McCaleb founded. Any earnings that Voltage makes are allocated to Navigation. McCaleb runs neither Voltage nor the organization, nor does he serve on their boards.
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