The cost of training is actually quite a bit less.
Emad, the creator of SD stated this on Twitter:
"We actually used 256 A100s for this per the model card, 150k hours in total so at market price $600k"
"We actually used 256 A100s for this per the model card, 150k hours in total so at market price $600k"
That's called "base models". (or "foundation models" if you're Stanford trying to co-opt it)