To be totally honest, I have no idea. When I first learned about them, I reached out to the CEO privately on LinkedIn, he asked what I was up to, I told him probably more than I should have (I come from an open source and transparent background), then he stopped talking to me entirely.
Since then, one of the co-founders blocked me on Twitter for pointing out that despite their claims, they were not the first MI300x to production. Neither were we, ElioVP gets that trophy, then Lamini, then GigaIO. Making us 4th and them 5th. I could go on and on with weird stuff I've seen them do, but it just isn't productive here.
Anyway, I think we have some overlap since we both are one of the few startups on the planet that actually has MI300x. But beyond that, I believe strongly that this space is large enough for multiple players and I don't see a need to be weird with each other. Apparently, I'm not on the same page though.
Thank you. I've been on HN since 2009. The most successful people I've seen here, are the ones that are transparent, honest and ethical.
I'm not trying to point fingers, I'm just focused on building a sustainable business and listening to my customers needs. The only way I can do that is by communicating with everyone around me as clearly and openly as I can. All our customers will know exactly where they stand, at all times.
I post a lot of open information on r/AMD_Stock and the feedback that I've gotten there has been exceptional. People are excited to see if AMD can claw back a bit of the market. For the safety and success of AI, we don't need team blue vs. team red, we need everyone to work towards having as many options as possible.
This is one way that I think we are going to differentiate ourselves. We won't just have MI300x, we will have every best-of-the-best chunk of hardware that we can get our hands on. No longer will super computers be tied up behind govt/edu grants. We want to democratize it. It has long been a goal of mine to build a super computer, and here is my chance. I'm excited.
One thing that sets us apart is that my co-founder and I have a ton of experience deploying, managing and optimizing 150,000 AMD GPUs and 20PB+ of storage. We did it ourselves, all through covid and all of the supply chain issues. I'm not sure many others have done that and this is something that we are well versed at doing.
I'm also seeing my competitors hiring a ton, while we are staying lean and mean with a very small team. I'd rather automate everything we deploy and focus all of our investors money on buying compute. We also have a pool of previous people we can hire from, which I think is quite an advantage over blanket hiring.
Just wanted to say that I like how you see things.
Also, if you need help with infrastructure automation and are interested in using Nix for increased reproducibility, get in touch. I know you said you want to keep lean and already have a pipeline of potential candidates, but just in case.
Hi Lucian, thank you for stepping up to the plate. Recognized and appreciated. We aren't quite in the hiring phase today, still bootstrapping and focused on growing with customer demand, but I have absolutely added you to my list for the future. Cheers!
