You saw correctly. I asked DT to remove the post because the announcement was premature.
Please know that there are other companies in the space who are interested in our ability to purchase large amounts of hashing power. Some chip manufacturers see the benefit of focusing purely on their core competency (chip design & production) and like the way we've opened our offering to the community at large (decentralization of ownership). We've all seen the problems mining hardware companies have had up until now with sales execution, customer support, shipping logistics and all the important things that go along with delivering these machines far and wide. Doing it this way gets their product out there faster, smoother and with much less hassle than shoe-horning marketing/support/logistics team onto an already extremely-busy design team. As tech companies they agree that rapid company growth places negative pressure on their technical development agility. e.g. If you have a chip designer directly answering customer/sales support questions then you're doing it wrong.
My apologies if it the post removal seems a bit "cloak and dagger", but we agree with senseless when he asked the question:
It does. We have a 25% expansion clause to fulfill and relying on a single manufacturer for servicing all our future expansion needs is not only short-sighted, but also bad business practice. If other manufacturers can deliver hashing power which fits well with the IceDrill's enterprise-level, high-density compute cluster we simply must have the conversation with them. Any announcements relevant to this topic will be made when/if the documentation to support them are finalised, not before.
EDIT: grammar
Is Avalon one of those companies?