Does Google Cloud payback on its own Tensor processors happen in less than a year? It might appear so.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian, speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia+Technology conference, said the aggregate payback period on Google's AI servers is less than two years.
But he also said the payback period for Google's own silicon is roughly half that, suggesting a payback within a year.
Noting that Google's accelerator business, including TPUs, is already more than twice the size of the next-largest hyperscaler's accelerator business, he said Google offers 2.7 times better price performance for AI training and 80 percent better price performance for inference, compared with the relevant alternatives.
To be sure, AI demand could slow, chip economics could deteriorate or competitors could close Google's performance gap. In that case, extensive AI infrastructure investment could turn out to be a mistake, as investors worry.
But some might say the latest figures suggest a reasonable case for payback on extensive infrastructure investments.
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