Gary Marcus questions Astra's $1B training bill as scaling data goes dark
GaryMarcus · x · 2026-09-07
Nina Schick claims Astra was trained on 100k Blackwell GPUs with an estimated $1B compute bill and 200 MW of power, arguing scaling still holds.
Gary Marcus suspects the real figure is even higher, and makes a broader point: base-model scaling data is no longer published—each new release bundles a new base model with undisclosed harnesses and augmented data, making it impossible to attribute improvements to any single factor. "Zero science is being reported," he writes, while asking what happens when the first gigawatt cluster comes online.
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