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Compute and silicon: the physical limit
Fabs, accelerators and the parts of the future that need a building.
Compute claims are the most falsifiable in the collection, because they resolve into things that can be counted: wafers, megawatts, delivery dates. They are also the claims most often made behind a supply agreement, which makes them partly sales documents.
The ledger records what was said and by whom. Where a claim is essentially a capacity commitment dressed as a forecast, the venue in the record usually gives it away.
| Claim | Horizon | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| <div><em>“Every three months of deployment delay can cost about $10 billion in revenue.”</em><br /><span class="tiny">Jensen Huang — GTC Berlin keynote, 2026-10-20</span></div> | Late 2020s | <span class="verdict" data-v="open">Open</span> |
| <div><em>“The inference cost [of foundation models] basically can be reduced by more than 90% over 12 months.”</em><br /><span class="tiny">Robin Li (Li Yanhong) — World Governments Summit, Dubai, 2025-02-11</span></div> | Rolling 12-month measure | <span class="verdict" data-v="validated">Validated</span> |
| <div><em>“Specialised silicon plus sparse models is the only path to serving intelligence at internet scale.”</em><br /><span class="tiny">Jeff Dean — Editorial summary</span></div> | Standing position | <span class="verdict" data-v="unrated">Unrated</span> |
| <div><em>“Power, not chips, becomes the binding constraint on training within a few years.”</em><br /><span class="tiny">Amin Vahdat — Editorial summary</span></div> | Standing position | <span class="verdict" data-v="unrated">Unrated</span> |
| <div><em>“Custom silicon is the difference between renting capacity and controlling cost.”</em><br /><span class="tiny">Matt Garman — Editorial summary</span></div> | Standing position | <span class="verdict" data-v="unrated">Unrated</span> |
| <div><em>“We will build datacentres at a scale that would have sounded absurd five years ago, and still fall short.”</em><br /><span class="tiny">Kevin Scott — Editorial summary</span></div> | Standing position | <span class="verdict" data-v="unrated">Unrated</span> |
| Person | Organisation | Group | Claims |
|---|---|---|---|
| <div class="person"><span class="face sigil" aria-hidden="true">AV</span><div><strong>Amin Vahdat</strong><br /><span class="tiny">VP and GM of machine learning, systems and cloud AI · Google</span></div></div> | Compute & capital | 1 | |
| <div class="person"><span class="face sigil" aria-hidden="true">AG</span><div><strong>Antonio Guterres</strong><br /><span class="tiny">Secretary-General · United Nations</span></div></div> | United Nations | Governments & states | 1 |
| <div class="person"><span class="face sigil" aria-hidden="true">AN</span><div><strong>Antonio Neri</strong><br /><span class="tiny">CEO · HPE</span></div></div> | HPE | Compute & capital | 1 |
| <div class="person"><img class="face" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Secretary_Chris_Wright_Official_Portrait.png/500px-Secretary_Chris_Wright_Official_Portrait.png" alt="" loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="44" height="44" /><div><strong>Chris Wright</strong><br /><span class="tiny">Secretary of Energy · US Department of Energy</span></div></div> | US Department of Energy | Governments & states | 1 |
| <div class="person"><span class="face sigil" aria-hidden="true">CR</span><div><strong>Chuck Robbins</strong><br /><span class="tiny">CEO · Cisco</span></div></div> | Cisco | Compute & capital | 1 |
| <div class="person"><span class="face sigil" aria-hidden="true">GB</span><div><strong>Gavin Baker</strong><br /><span class="tiny">Managing partner · Atreides</span></div></div> | Atreides | Capital allocators | 1 |
| Domain | Validated | Partly borne out | Contested | Missed | Open | Unfalsifiable | Unrated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Models & AGI | 0 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 19 | 0 | 17 |
| Compute & silicon | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 24 |
| Work & labour | 0 | 1 | 4 | 0 | 9 | 0 | 29 |
| Science & health | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 8 |
| Robotics & space | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 7 |
| Capital & markets | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 25 |
| Policy & governance | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 40 |
| Security & risk | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 18 |
| Open models | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 9 |
Figures computed from docs/predictions/ledger.json at build time. Every claim quoted on this page carries its own sources in the ledger.