关注本公众号，回复“进群”进经济学人打卡群
概要：人工智能很火，各大公司掀起了投资热潮，但是也有隐忧。比如芯片领域过度依赖于英伟达，估值过高等。本文详细探讨了这些风险。
What could kill the $1trn artificial-intelligence boom?
1万亿美元人工智能热潮中的隐忧
A fast-growing supply chain is in danger of over-extending
供应链快速增长，正面临过度扩张危险
8月 01, 2024 09:21 上午
“THE RISK of
under-investing is dramatically greater than the risk of over-investing,” said
Sundar Pichai, the boss of Alphabet, which owns Google, on a recent earnings
call. He, like lots of executives nowadays, was talking about artificial
intelligence (AI). More specifically, he was talking
about building AI data centres to serve the customers
of the tech giant’s cloud-computing arm. The sums involved are eye-popping.
Alphabet’s capital spending is expected to grow by about half this year, to
$48bn. Much of that will be spent on AI-related gear.
“投资不足的风险远远大于过度投资，”谷歌母公司Alphabet的老板Sundar Pichai在最近的季报电话会议上说。和如今许多高管一样，他也在谈论人工智能(AI)。更具体地说，他在谈论的是建立人工智能数据中心，以服务于谷歌云计算部门的客户。投资涉及金额令人瞠目结舌。Alphabet今年的资本支出预计将增长约50%，至480亿美元。其中大部分将花在人工智能相关的设备上。
Mr Pichai is in good company. During an earnings call on July 30th Satya Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft, also reaffirmed his plans to spend big on AI. Alphabet and Microsoft, along with Amazon and Meta, will together spend $104bn building AIdata centres this year, estimates New Street Research, a firm of analysts. Add in spending by smaller tech firms and companies in other industries and the total AI data-centre binge between 2024 and 2027 could reach $1.4trn.
Pichai的举措并不孤单。在7月30日的季报电话会议上，微软首席执行官Satya Nadella也重申了人工智能上的巨额投资计划。分析公司New Street Research估计，Alphabet、微软、亚马逊和Meta今年将总共投资1040亿美元建设人工智能数据中心。加上较小科技公司和其他行业公司的支出，2024年至2027年间人工智能数据中心的投资总规模可能达到1.4万亿美元。
The scale of this investment, and uncertainty over if and when it will pay off, is giving shareholders the jitters. The day after Alphabet’s results the NASDAQ, a tech-heavy index, fell by 4%, the biggest one-day drop since October 2022. Microsoft’s share price also fell after its earnings release.
这项投资的巨大规模，以及回报的不确定性让股东们紧张不安。Alphabet发布业绩的第二天，以科技股为主的纳斯达克指数下跌4%，创下2022年10月以来的最大单日跌幅。微软股价也在财报发布后下跌。
For now, the tech giants show little inclination to pare back their investments, as Mr Pichai’s remarks show. That is good news for the myriad suppliers that are benefiting from the boom. Nvidia, a supplier of AI chips that in June briefly became the world’s most valuable company, has grabbed most of the headlines. But the AI supply chain is far more sprawling. It spans hundreds of firms, from Taiwanese server manufacturers and Swiss engineering outfits to American power utilities. Many have seen a surge in demand since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, and are themselves investing accordingly. In time, supply bottlenecks or waning demand could leave those companies over-extended.
就目前而言，正如Pichai的言论所示，科技巨头们没有表现出削减投资的倾向。对于从繁荣中受益的无数供应商来说，这是个好消息。人工智能芯片供应商英伟达(Nvidia)在6月份曾短暂成为世界上市值最高的公司，这一新闻成为多数媒体的头条新闻。但人工智能供应链的范围要广得多，涵盖了从台湾服务器制造商和瑞士工程公司到美国电力公司的数百家公司。自2022年ChatGPT推出以来，许多人看到了需求的激增，也相应地进行了投资。随着时间的推移，供应瓶颈或需求下降可能会导致过度扩张。
AI investment can be split into two. Half of it goes to chipmakers, with
Nvidia the main beneficiary. The rest is spent on makers of equipment that
keeps the chips whirring, ranging from networking gear to cooling systems. To
assess the goings-on along the AI supply chain, The Economist has examined a basket of 60-odd such
companies. Since the start of 2023 the mean share price of firms in our universe
has risen by 103%, compared with a 42% increase in the S&P 500 index of American stocks (see chart 1). Their
expected sales for 2025 have climbed by 14%, on average. That compares with a
1% increase across non-financial firms, excluding tech companies, in the S&P 500.
AI投资可以分为两大领域。其中一半流向了芯片制造商，英伟达是主要受益者。剩下的则是从网络设备到冷却系统等让芯片保持运转的设备制造商。为了评估人工智能供应链，《经济学人》调查了60多家相关公司。自2023年初以来，我们调查范围内的公司平均股价上涨了103%，相比之下，美国股票的标准普尔500指数上涨了42%(见图表1)。这些公司的2025年预期销售额平均上升了14%。相比之下，不包括科技公司在内的标准普尔500非金融企业仅增长了1%。
The biggest gainers were chipmakers and server manufacturers (see chart 2). Nvidia accounted for almost a third of the rise in the group’s expected sales. It is forecast to sell $105bn of AI chips and related equipment this year, up from $48bn in its latest fiscal year. AMD, its nearest rival, will probably sell about $12bn of data-centre chips this year, up from $7bn. In June Broadcom, another chipmaker, said that its quarterly AI revenues jumped by 280%, year on year, to $3.1bn. It helps customers, including cloud providers, design their own chips, and also sells networking equipment. On July 25th SK Hynix, one more chipmaker, said it expects demand for its advanced memory chips to more than double in the next year.
最大的受益者是芯片制造商和服务器制造商(见图表2)。英伟达贡献了被调查公司预期销售额增长的近三分之一。预计该公司今年将销售1050亿美元的人工智能芯片和相关设备，高于上一财年的480亿美元。其最接近的竞争对手AMD今年可能会出售约120亿美元的数据中心芯片，高于去年的70亿美元。6月，另一家芯片制造商博通表示，其季度人工智能收入同比增长280%，达到31亿美元。博通帮助包括云提供商在内的客户设计自己的芯片，并销售网络设备。7月25日，另一家芯片制造商SK海力士公司表示，预计明年其先进存储芯片的需求将增加一倍以上。
Companies that make servers are also raking it in. Both Dell and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) said in their most recent earnings calls that sales of AI servers doubled in the past quarter. Foxconn, a Taiwanese manufacturer that assembles lots of Apple’s iPhones, also has a server business. In May it said its AI sales had tripled over the past year.
服务器制造公司也赚得盆满钵满。戴尔和惠普企业(HPE)在最近的财报电话会议上都表示，人工智能服务器上个季度销量翻了一番。为苹果组装大量iPhones的台湾制造商富士康也有服务器业务。今年5月，富士康表示，其人工智能销量在过去一年中增长了两倍。
Other firms are seeing interest spike, even if new sales have not yet materialised. Eaton, a maker of industrial machinery, said that in the past year it saw more than a four-fold increase in customer enquiries in America related to its AI data-centre products. AI servers can require up to ten times more power than conventional ones. Earl Austin Junior, the boss of Quanta Services, a firm that builds renewable-power and transmission equipment, recently admitted that the surge in demand for its data-centre business had “caught me off guard a little bit”. Vertiv, which sells cooling systems used in data centres, noted in April that its pipeline of AI projects more than doubled within two months.
订阅以下专栏（仅需10元）后继续阅读：
