If we didn't have a RAM/GPU shortage right now they would be more nervous than they are. But as it is very few people are going to be able to afford a rig that can run this model effectively. That's probably not going to change for several more years yet. I think if the Z.ai folks decide to come out with a flash version of GLM-5.2 specialized for coding that came in about about 80B params, then the US frontier labs would probably be more worried. Overall, the Chinese AI companies have been showing the way to do the same amount with less (sometimes much less) and as that trend continues it's going to make the frontier labs worried - but even the Chinese AI companies are going to want to protect their moat by not releasing capable models that are significantly smaller than their current flagship models. AliBaba Qwen seems to be there now - it's gotten mighty quiet from them lately - their latest 395B model is just too large for most folks to run at home and they don't seem to be making any noises about releasing smaller ones this time around.
The ram/gpu shortage won't last forever though. Moreover we can be pretty confident that long-term the prices will obey wrights law and come down in cost significantly (from the pre-shortage prices) as we learn to produce them more efficiently.
LLM companies are valued as if they're going to have some enduring monopoly that they can extract money from... GLM-5.2 and similar models make that valuation very very questionable.
thats pretty scary to me. what will the data centers be used for if people run that stuff offline? maybe new models? but will there even be any demand? I guess we will see
the companies which have the power to alleviate these shortages are the same companies who are profiting most from the shortage. scarcity is an asset, it's not irrational that a concentrated marked will produce more of that asset.
The market is also effectively an oligopoly and not really an open market, so there isn't the usual chance of new players coming in to pick up niches or start competing on price.
maybe the irrational part is the amount of demand for consumer hardware, wouldn't the market for professional ML/AI used hardware go away from consumer hardware over time? (I can talk more about what I mean consumer hardware to be)
Also irrational parts of this market (would love to hear your thoughts):
- the purchase of hardware that isn't power efficient or gives an ROI for ML/AI use cases by companies buying it, who would be priced out of using that hardware over time
- many people and companies are buying the hardware due to hype and scarcity/FOMO reasons over rational reasons
Very few people, but quite a lot of companies especially after per token pricing took effect and companies see their invoices skyrocketing. You pay an upfront cost once and you’re done.
> Alibaba released Qwen 3.6 "tiny" models not that long ago, they punch way above their weight(s)
True, Qwen3.6-27B is amazing for it's size. However, it seems likely that we're not going to see anymore of these smaller models from Alibaba/Qwen since several key players exited that organization a few months back.
When a large open weight model is released, a lab, startup, or a rich hoist can easily do logit-level distillation and create a XXb param model or whatever, and in theory you should get a really good distill.
is it possible that ai companies ordered a bunch of ram just so that models cannot be run locally? they are betting new fabs wont be built before quantum takes hold.
I am quite certain that it is delayed on purpose to maximize the gains, but at some point some company will see the huge demand for local ai and will want to eat the cake (given that it is feasible)
