Can anyone slow Nvidia down?

Also: Meta's Coup de Ass

Welcome to Cautious Optimism, a newsletter on tech, business, and power.

• 📈 Trending Up: Eurozone inflation … Tibetan earthquakes … ChatGPT, which saw its greatest search interest in December 2024 … Microsoft’s investments in India … international flight availability in Syria …

• 📉 Trending Down: Russian oil production … Justin Trudeau …

• Quick Hit: The Getty Images-Shutterstock merger is a bet that the next head of the FTC won’t block such deals. As, let’s be honest, the planned joining won’t increase competition, and thus I doubt that Lina Khan would have allowed it.

  • Are the companies struggling? Somewhat. Looking at their Q3 results (Getty, Shutterstock), we see two companies with around a quarter-billion in quarterly revenue apiece, limited profitability, and single-digit growth. As a pair, they probably can cut costs and generate a bit more net margin. But oof, if this is their shape already in the smartphone, and now smartphone + AI image generation era, you wonder how much better they will be together given market trends.

Nvidia’s Coup(s) de Grâce

Shares of Nvidia are up 2% in pre-market trading after the company announced a series of products at CES. Out of everything that the chip giant announced, I want to focus on two:

New GPUs that crush

Nvidia’s new 50- series of GPUs look incredible and are priced competitively. The general consensus amongst gamers is that the proof will be in the reviews, but the stats sheets look impressive. And no one expects to be able to buy one as MSRP for some time.

Why do we care about a new GPU line for consumer desktops? Because it shows that Nvidia can chew gum (incredible data center business), while walking (great new consumer GPUs), and talking (shipping new AI models), waving its arms (pushing AI robotics ahead), and balancing a pot on its head (see the next item); Nvidia’s product cadence is insane.

And I have to admit, I am in the market for a new GPU as my current workhorse is failing. Thanks, Jensen!

Mini-AI powerhouse to bring AI to the consumer desktop

We could have made a tortured joke about GPUs bringing AI to the consumer desktop as Nvidia also uses AI to bring GPUs to the consumer desktop — but let’s be honest and treat Project Digits like what it is. Namely, something new.

At a cost of around $3,000, Project Digits is what Nvidia calls a “personal AI supercomputer.” In practice, it’s a NVIDIA GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip inside a box that you can buy and use to run AI models at home. And not just little ones:

The GB10 Superchip enables Project DIGITS to deliver powerful performance using only a standard electrical outlet. Each Project DIGITS features 128GB of unified, coherent memory and up to 4TB of NVMe storage. With the supercomputer, developers can run up to 200-billion-parameter large language models to supercharge AI innovation. In addition, using NVIDIA ConnectX® networking, two Project DIGITS AI supercomputers can be linked to run up to 405-billion-parameter models.

Hot damn.

Nvidia chips power much of the centralized compute used to train AI models and execute AI inference. Now, the company wants to sell single-shot AI machines for your house or workspace. And at $3,000 (and up) they cost little enough that any company that can afford AI-competent developers can afford a fleet of the things.

Homebrew computing is in a golden age.

Update: After completing the newsletter this morning, I decided that the Nvidia section was too brief. I did not include, for example, the new Nemotron AI model family from the company, focused on helping push agentic AI forward. And the company is helping make gaming NPCs digital teammates, because why not.

Can anyone slow Nvidia down?

Meta’s Coup de Ass

And then there’s Meta. After bumping Nick Clegg — previously Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom — for domestic Republican Joel Kaplan to run policy, Zuckberg’s social empire has more changes coming:

• An end to fact checking, a focus on community notes, less restrictive speech, and more political content [source].

• Dana White, CEO of UFC, joining its board [source].

I like to consider myself a somewhat hardcore free-speech advocate. So, in my view, a private company deciding to change how it uses its own speech rights is more than acceptable. That said, I, too, have speech rights, so I can critique the action’s substance.

I find it ironic that after a Trump win we’re seeing two major social platforms labor to cater to the incoming administration. In the case of Meta, more political content with less fact-checking is an effective way to create a more reality-free social-news environment. That’s great for Trumpism, which depends much more on vibes and putatively-righteous anger than facts. But not great for people actually knowing what is going on.

And now that Trump has won, X is changing its algorithms to promote happier content. Just the sort of thing you’d want to execute if you wanted to tilt an information economy to better fit your hopes for consumer sentiment; now that you won, you want people to be happy that you won. So, spoon feed them good news!

• It’s the Fox News model. When there’s a Democrat in the White House, the news is bad no matter what the numbers say. When it’s a Republican, things are good no matter what the numbers say. Or in social media-land, when a Democrat is in the White House, the social media feed is doomy and gloomy, and when a Republican wins, why can’t we all be a bit more positive?

If any of the above sounds too conspiratorial, stick with me. Meta elevating Kaplan is pretty on-the-nose regarding the company’s Trump 2.0 posture. But the addition of Dana White to its board is a flashing siren that Meta wants to buddy up to the new administration.

Dana White is a Trump friend, and one of the worst people I have ever had the misfortune to learn more about. If you want to understand better how the UFC, White’s fief, uses up and disposes of men and women who give their health for the chance at fleeting financial wins at the cost of their future, read this. And pay special attention to the White bits; this is who Zuckerberg added to his board.

There’s been a lot of chat in Silicon Valley in recent years about merit versus diversity. I’ve never understood the supposed conflict — the best teams that I have been on, or led, have had lots of different sorts on them — but let’s simply take the Tech Right at face value: What merit does Dana White bring to Meta? What’s his winning qualification to help run an effective nation-state? As far as I can tell from here, it’s that the CEO of the company likes wrasslin’ and White is the incoming President’s bud.

That’s not merit. That’s not even diversity. That’s just ass-kissing.