Well, they own chunks of Coreweave and Nebius I think?

I didn't know that, I thought it was just financing deals as I never looked closely into it. It looks like the ownership is lowish in both though (from what I can fine)

You might as well ask why they don't just keep all their GPUs and compete directly with Anthropic and OpenAI to make frontier models. The answer is the same, Nvidia's core competency is hardware and although they dabble up the stack they would rather stay focused on the GPU business. It also provides a degree of separation where they can bet on many different neoclouds and AI businesses, and some may fail but there will be survivors and winners.

Yeah obviously, but I just think of it in layers. Selling a product vs renting is a different business but closely related. Microsoft made their entire Cloud and O356 business by renting products they used to sell. Then to compete directly with Anthropic and OpenAI, it would need DCs to start. It can rent its own hardware back from cloud providers like Anthropic does or build DCs and rent to others and its own use.

It's basically the entire Anthropic IPO model too right? Start with the model, then get into productivity, design, and slowly other businesses and companies with your AI. I agree with another post here that Nvidia didn't seem particularly AGI pilled, but they are certainly DC pilled.

They want to sell the shovels in the gold rush - gold extraction is a different, riskier business.