In 2025, the AI landscape is rapidly evolving, with major tech companies vying for supremacy. This article explores the escalating competition between Microsoft, OpenAI, and Meta, highlighting the significance of infrastructure investments and the implications for the future of AI.
All I know is I’m good for my $80 billion.” Rarely does a one-liner so perfectly capture the state of the moment. Here, you have Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella saying he’s “not in the details” about Stargate , the supposedly multi-hundred-billion AI infrastructure project driven by his marquee investment, OpenAI. Nadella not being read in on the nebulous details of Stargate says a lot about how much Microsoft and OpenAI have drifted apart.
Microsoft is mentioned in the Stargate press release since OpenAI’s models are still exclusive to Azure. But the most striking aspect of Stargate is not that the money isn’t there for it yet; it’s that OpenAI’s biggest backer has decided to not participate in what Sam Altman is calling “the most important project of this era.” As Nadella made clear on CNBC this week, he’s running his own, $80 billion AI infrastructure buildout and, going forward, OpenAI can get additional compute — with his blessing — elsewhere. While it received fewer headlines this week, I found Nadella’s response to Elon Musk on X even more illuminating. In his response to Musk saying, “on the other hand, Satya definitely does have the money,” Nadella responded: “😂 And all this money is not about hyping AI, but is about building useful things for the real world!” That post can only be interpreted as a dig at Altman. Nadella could have funded Stargate for OpenAI. He didn’t. What does he know that the rest of us don’t?The splashy Stargate unveiling at the White House certainly accomplished its goal, which was clearly getting everyone to talk about big numbers. The headlines it generated prompted Mark Zuckerberg to make sure everyone ended the week knowing his data center will be even bigger than Stargate. In a Friday post on his Facebook page, Zuckerberg said that Meta’s planned 2GW data center in Louisiana “is so large it would cover a significant part of Manhattan,” with a map view of the square footage overlaid on the city to send the point home. From his post (my emphasis added): “We’ll bring online ~1GW of compute in ‘25 and we’ll end the year with more than 1.3 million GPUs. We’re planning to invest $60-65B in capex this year while also growing our AI teams significantly, and we have the capital to continue investing in the years ahead.” I have no doubt that Altman, Masayoshi Son, and Larry Ellison will be able to raise the billions they need to lessen OpenAI’s dependence on Microsoft for compute. (The US government isn’t giving money to Stargate, which makes the optics of announcing it alongside Trump all the more bizarre.) Ultimately, this all points to the theme that is quickly coming to define 2025: Big Tech sees AI as the most existential technology of the coming era and will keep spending like hell to make sure OpenAI doesn’t completely run away with it.Few companies had as good of a 2024 as Reddit. Since going public last March, the company’s stock has soared 300 percent, giving the social network a valuation of $32 billion. It’s an about-face from where Reddit was before going public, when its moderators were raging against its hurried platform changes and there was backlash to the company selling its data to Google and OpenAI. With those controversies now seemingly in the rear-view mirror, Reddit is focused on growing its user base, staying profitable, and using AI to help people search its site more easily. I caught up with CEO Steve Huffman at CES a few weeks ago to hear his priorities for 2025, how he’s leading Reddit, his thoughts on the AI scaling debate, content moderation, and more… The following interview has been edited for length and clarity: Your IPO did very well. What have the last nine months or so been like for you personally? We have a saying at Reddit that good numbers make good meetings. So we’ve had some good meetings. Preparing to go public was intense. It’s telling the story over and over and over, which I enjoy doing, but it’s a lot of work. I think more than most new companies, we are in the public company rhythm already: close the quarter, do the audits, do the board meeting, earnings, and all of that. So it hasn’t been a major change for us from an operating point of view. It’s a really exciting time for the new investors and employees. You won’t catch us complaining. What I keep telling the company is that everyone should be very proud of the work they’ve done and don’t take these moments for granted. I just tell them, look, enjoy the view. If you look at our history, there are lots of ups and downs. No doubt there are challenges in our future. With your market cap where it is now, are you thinking of making swings you didn’t think you could make a year ago? There are two classes of things that we would do. One is to execute the core strategy. We’ve got to hire. We’ve got to build. I think we’re very reasonable in terms of our investment siz
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