Skip to content
Artwork for Forward Deployed
Forward Deployed · July 17 · 1 hr 17 min

Andy Hock - How Cerebras Plans to Kill Nvidia

Cerebras IPO'd just a couple months ago and has already locked in a 750MW compute deal with OpenAI. Andy Hock's pitch: the GPU is the wrong chip for where AI is going. I sat down with Andy Hock, Chief Strategy Officer at Cerebras, whose chips are the size of dinner plates instead of postage stamps — which lets them run inference up to 15x faster than even the latest Nvidia GPUs. We got into how that architecture works, the 750MW OpenAI deal (the 2x-faster Codex option runs on Cerebras), and why the memory crisis spiking GPU prices actually benefits Cerebras, since all their memory sits on the chip. Andy also argued the AI buildout isn't a bubble, that "training is a cost center and inference is where you make the big bucks," and why that "95% of enterprise AI pilots fail" stat measured the wrong thing at the wrong time — plus their supercomputer work with governments like the UAE, and why they turned down selling chips to China. We covered all that and much more. Subscribe for more on AI and the infrastructure behind it, and follow me, Basil Chatha, for everything AI agents. Chapters 00:00 Intro 01:06 What Cerebras Actually Builds 03:41 Before LLMs Existed 06:09 The GPT Wake-Up Call 10:45 First Principles of AI Compute 15:40 One Giant Chip 18:43 So Why Do We Still Use GPUs? 20:59 Why Inference Took Over 22:27 Where Fast Tokens Win 25:07 Is AI Infra a Bubble? 29:56 The Memory Shortage, Explained 32:35 The Energy Problem 35:34 Rolling Their Own Data Centers 38:20 What a Chip Actually Costs 40:18 AI Designing AI Chips 41:40 The Supply Chain Reality 43:45 Cheap Tokens vs Fast Tokens 46:11 Why Every Millisecond Matters 48:56 Inside the OpenAI Deal 51:56 The Gigawatt Future 54:00 Selling to the Government 58:36 Exporting the US AI Stack 01:03:17 Should We Sell Chips to China? 01:06:00 Why Europe Is Falling Behind 01:07:59 Why Enterprise AI Moves Slow 01:13:05 "I Haven't Read Code in Months" 01:14:32 The Next Cerebras Chip 01:16:50 Closing Thoughts

0:00-1:17:22

transcript

No transcript — this publisher did not publish one.

show notes

Cerebras IPO'd just a couple months ago and has already locked in a 750MW compute deal with OpenAI. Andy Hock's pitch: the GPU is the wrong chip for where AI is going.

I sat down with Andy Hock, Chief Strategy Officer at Cerebras, whose chips are the size of dinner plates instead of postage stamps — which lets them run inference up to 15x faster than even the latest Nvidia GPUs. We got into how that architecture works, the 750MW OpenAI deal (the 2x-faster Codex option runs on Cerebras), and why the memory crisis spiking GPU prices actually benefits Cerebras, since all their memory sits on the chip. Andy also argued the AI buildout isn't a bubble, that "training is a cost center and inference is where you make the big bucks," and why that "95% of enterprise AI pilots fail" stat measured the wrong thing at the wrong time — plus their supercomputer work with governments like the UAE, and why they turned down selling chips to China.

We covered all that and much more. Subscribe for more on AI and the infrastructure behind it, and follow me, Basil Chatha, for everything AI agents.


Chapters

00:00 Intro

01:06 What Cerebras Actually Builds

03:41 Before LLMs Existed

06:09 The GPT Wake-Up Call

10:45 First Principles of AI Compute

15:40 One Giant Chip

18:43 So Why Do We Still Use GPUs?

20:59 Why Inference Took Over

22:27 Where Fast Tokens Win

25:07 Is AI Infra a Bubble?

29:56 The Memory Shortage, Explained

32:35 The Energy Problem

35:34 Rolling Their Own Data Centers

38:20 What a Chip Actually Costs

40:18 AI Designing AI Chips

41:40 The Supply Chain Reality

43:45 Cheap Tokens vs Fast Tokens

46:11 Why Every Millisecond Matters

48:56 Inside the OpenAI Deal

51:56 The Gigawatt Future

54:00 Selling to the Government

58:36 Exporting the US AI Stack

01:03:17 Should We Sell Chips to China?

01:06:00 Why Europe Is Falling Behind

01:07:59 Why Enterprise AI Moves Slow

01:13:05 "I Haven't Read Code in Months"

01:14:32 The Next Cerebras Chip

01:16:50 Closing Thoughts