Andreessen Horowitz, which built a 20,000-GPU cluster for its startups two years ago, is discussing an expansion that could run through Switch and Volta, both of them data center businesses in its portfolio, according to The Information. General Catalyst is working on a data center of its own for portfolio companies from early stage through growth. Both firms are responding to a chip shortage that led Microsoft and other big cloud providers to steer GPUs toward their own teams and largest customers earlier this year, leaving smaller startups struggling to find capacity. The clusters may also pay off, because a16z could resell capacity its startups don’t use, and the early-stage firm Crucible Capital already rents part of its 576-chip Nvidia B300 cluster to a frontier lab.
