$NBIS Arkady Volozh reveals Nebius recently auctioned its Blackwell compute and cleared 15% to 20% above any price it had ever sold before
"Well, when you have this imbalance between demand and supply, the best price discovery mechanism is something like an auction, in one way or another."
"Again, we try to do it manually first to raise the prices. It didn't help. The demand is still there."
"What is the best mechanism to discover what is the real price, what the real price balance should be?"
"We ran our first experimental auction for the Blackwell processors a month ago, several weeks ago. We achieved results when we got 15%, 20% higher price than we ever sold before, after all our price raises."
"We like the experience, but more importantly, our clients like the experience. The guys who won this auction, they tweeted that they're happy that they were able to get guaranteed capacity through this mechanism."
"Because this is the only way when there's a deficit of resources and you need it."
"What is the way to get it guaranteed? Go in the price competition and win. And they won the auction, and they were happy about it, and we are happy about it."