The world’s leading artificial intelligence companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the computer data centers needed to create A.I.
Tech giants like Amazon and Google and well-funded start-ups like Anthropic and OpenAI are among the tiny group of outfits with the money and connections to get access to all that computing power.
That leaves other organizations out in the cold.
Anjney Midha, a serial tech entrepreneur who was a partner with the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, hopes to change that dynamic with an unusual start-up. His young company, Amp, is trying to buy extra computing power from data center operators in the United States and other countries so it can share that valuable resource with anyone who needs it.
Amp, based in Menlo Park, Calif., aims to create a global pool of specialized computer chips that can be used by start-ups, universities and other organizations that otherwise would not have access to the vast amounts of computing required to train the most powerful A.I. models.
“Some companies just can’t get the computing power they need,” Mr. Midha said. “The world’s wealthiest and most powerful companies are hoarding the infrastructure for themselves.”
Amp has raised more than $1.3 billion from investors including Andreessen-Horowitz, the start-up incubator Y Combinator and various cloud computing providers.
Several notable start-ups have also agreed to help use and share its pool of computing power, including Periodic Labs, an A.I. start-up focused on scientific discovery, and Eleven Labs, which builds A.I. systems for generating voices.
Amp is part of a wider effort to pool A.I. infrastructure. The chip maker Nvidia and the French start-up Mistral said this year that they would pool computing power for building A.I. systems for European companies and nations, hoping to reduce their dependence on U.S. tech giants.
Mr. Midha compared his start-up to forming an electricity grid. Just as a pool of electrical power can be shared among homes and offices, a pool of computing power can be shared among start-ups and universities.
Investors contribute funds that Amp can use to buy computing power from the data center operators. A.I. start-ups then join the coalition so they can use the computing power to build A.I. models. In return, these start-ups contribute additional funds or perhaps other resources.
Some start-ups may share digital data needed to train A.I. models. Or they may share the models themselves, giving away the core software code to others in the coalition. Companies may even work to train models together.
The ultimate value of the coalition is collective bargaining, said Liam Fedus, chief executive of Periodic Labs. On its own, his start-up would struggle to get the computing power it needed. But if Amp can negotiate with data center operators on behalf of many start-ups, it can gain additional leverage.
“When you pool your demand, you can have far more serious conversation about buying computing power,” Mr. Fedus said.
Cade Metz is a Times reporter who writes about artificial intelligence, driverless cars, robotics, virtual reality and other emerging areas of technology.
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