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What fine-tuning actually costs (it's not what you think)
Training an AI model is assumed to cost millions of dollars. It's the single most common misconception in the space, and it's wrong by roughly two orders of magnitude for the activity most people actually want to do. This post is a short, concrete breakdown of what fine-tuning actually costs in 2026, what it doesn't cost, and where the real spend lives. I'm writing it now because 'how much does this cost' is the first question I get whenever I mention that I'm training a model, and the answer
Read storyFounder Reality is written by George Pu — $10M+ portfolio built by 27, no investors, no co-founders.
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The Lie Every $997 Trading Course Sells You
What two years of quant trading taught me before I shut it down.
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Free at the Base, Paid at the Frontier
Open source AI didn't die. It ran out of sponsors.
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AI Real Estate: From Apartment to Mansion
AI Real Estate: From Apartment to Mansion A $3,999 Mac Studio runs a 122 billion parameter AI model on your desk. Running the same model on AWS costs roughly $5 an hour. About $3,700 a month if you leave it on. The Mac pays for itself in five weeks. A $3,999 Mac Studio runs a 122B parameter AI model locally. Running that same model on AWS: $5/hour. ~$3,700/month if you leave it on. The Mac pays for itself in five weeks. I didn't think this was possible. Most people still don't. — George
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Integration (Recovery)
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Three essays from the archive on a different angle.
The Lie Every $997 Trading Course Sells You
What two years of quant trading taught me before I shut it down.
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Why I'm Open-Sourcing My Portfolio
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Why I Sold My Index Funds in February
Why the index gospel was built for a world that no longer exists.
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Own Your Tech
Why renting your stack is the quietest way to lose everything you build.
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ReadAI Displacement Series
Seven chapters on what's actually happening, and what to do about it.
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A couple of older essays we think are worth a second look.

Free at the Base, Paid at the Frontier
Open source AI didn't die. It ran out of sponsors.
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The Freedom Number Isn't What You Think
Stop calculating your "retirement number." Everyone obsesses over how much they need saved to never work again. $1M? $2.5M? $5M? You're asking the wrong question. The right question: How much cash flow do I need to own to say no to anything? The answer is probably 80% smaller than your retirement number—and achievable 30 years sooner. The Wrong Calculation (That Everyone Does) The traditional retirement framework: "How muc
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Recent threads
The latest from @TheGeorgePu.
Canada's AI hardware reality check — what's actually available vs. what founders think they can buy.
GPU shipping is the tell. If you can't physically own the compute, you don't own your AI stack.
I only write code when it's 10/10 important. Slowing down is the real productivity move in 2026.
Mac Studio supply is crunched. Apple's quietly rationing M3 Ultra — AI builders feel it first.
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