Nvidia partnered with Equinix and Together AI to offer enterprise customers access to open-model inference. This is a data center deal. Equinix provides the physical space. Together AI runs the software. Nvidia supplies the chips. Corporate press releases described this as "groundbreaking collaboration in the AI ecosystem."
Equinix owns buildings with air conditioning and electricity. They rent these buildings to companies that need somewhere to plug in computers. This business model predates the iPhone. Predates Google. Predates the dot-com bubble. But because those computers now run AI workloads instead of email servers, Equinix gets to claim they've "found a niche" in a multitrillion-dollar boom.
The niche is landlord.
Together AI needs GPUs to run inference workloads. Nvidia makes the GPUs. The GPUs generate heat and consume power. Equinix has rooms with cooling systems and circuit breakers. Nvidia announced this partnership like they'd just cured cancer. What they actually did was agree to put expensive hardware inside a temperature-controlled warehouse that Equinix already owned.
Retail traders saw the headline and started Googling "what is Equinix." They learned it's a real estate investment trust that operates data centers. They saw the words "AI" and "Nvidia" in the same press release. They bought calls. They texted their friends about getting in early on the AI infrastructure play. Their friends had never heard of Equinix either. Also bought calls.
Open-model inference means running AI models that aren't locked behind OpenAI's API. Enterprise customers want this because they're terrified of vendor lock-in. They'll pay Equinix monthly fees to house servers. They'll pay Together AI to manage the software stack. They'll pay Nvidia whatever Nvidia demands for chips. Then they'll calculate total cost of ownership and realize they should've just used ChatGPT.
Equinix found a niche the same way your local U-Haul found a niche in the moving industry by owning a parking lot.
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