Generative AI is transforming Silicon Valley生成式人工智能正在改变硅谷风险投资的游戏规则
The technology is forcing America’s disrupters-in-chief to think differently美国主要风险投资者们将不得不打破常规的思考方式
September 19th 2024
A RARE BEAST may soon lumber across the hills of Silicon Valley: not a $1bn unicorn, nor a $10bn decacorn, but a hectocorn—a startup valued at more than $100bn. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is understood to be in talks to raise $6.5bn from investors to fund the expansion dreams of its co-founder, Sam Altman. If it pulls off the deal, OpenAI’s valuation will be about $150bn, making it only the second ever $100bn-plus startup in America after SpaceX, a rocketry giant led by Elon Musk (who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 and is now Mr Altman’s nemesis).
一种极为罕见的庞然大物或许很快就会在硅谷出现：既非价值十亿美元的独角兽，亦非价值一百亿美元的十角兽，而是百角兽 —— 一家估值超过一千亿美元的初创企业。据悉，ChatGPT 的创造者 OpenAI 正与投资者洽谈筹集65亿美元资金，以助力其联合创始人山姆・奥特曼的扩张之梦。倘若这笔交易成功，OpenAI 的估值将约达1500亿美元，使其成为美国继埃隆・马斯克领导的火箭巨头 SpaceX 之后第二家价值超千亿美元的初创公司（马斯克于 2015 年参与共同创立了 OpenAI，如今却成了奥特曼的死对头）。
All this makes OpenAI sound like a typical tech sensation: a sizzling startup reliant on intrepid investors to develop a new way of doing things that it hopes will change the world. Think Google, Facebook or Uber. Yet its significance goes further than that. Generative artificial intelligence (AI), the technology on which OpenAI is built, is changing the rules of the game in Silicon Valley itself.
所有这些都让 OpenAI 成为一家典型的科技热门公司。作为一家炙手可热的初创公司，OpenAI 依赖冒着很大风险的投资者的资金开发新技术，希望能够改变世界，就像谷歌、脸书和优步一样。然而，其重要性远不止于此。OpenAI 所基于的生成式人工智能技术正在改变硅谷的游戏规则。
There are three big challenges posed by the new technology: many venture-capital (VC) stalwarts cannot afford the huge sums of money that firms like OpenAI need to train and run generative-AI models; the technology scales in different ways than they are used to; and it may rely on unfamiliar approaches to making money. In short, generative AI is bringing disruption to the home of America’s disrupters-in-chief. Enjoy the Schadenfreude.
生成式人工智能技术带来了三大挑战：许多风险投资的坚定支持者无法承担 OpenAI 训练和运行生成式人工智能模型所需的巨额资金。这项技术的发展方式与以前风险投资所习惯的情况不同，所依赖的盈利方式也不一样。简而言之，生成式人工智能技术正在给美国主要科技颠覆者的发源地硅谷带来新的游戏规则。享受这种幸灾乐祸的感觉吧。
The first shock for venture capitalists is the size of the cheques required to fund the builders of large language models (LLMs) like those powering ChatGPT. According to PitchBook, a data gatherer, the average size of a VC fund raised in America last year was about $150m. OpenAI is looking to collect more than 40 times that from investors. The biggest cheques for LLMs are thus being written not by the VC industry but by tech giants. Since 2019 Microsoft has invested $13bn in OpenAI; this year Amazon invested $4bn in Anthropic, one of OpenAI’s main rivals.
对风险投资人来说，第一个冲击是需要提供巨额资金支持为 ChatGPT 提供动力的大语言模型（LLM）。据数据收集机构 PitchBook 称，去年美国风险投资基金平均筹资规模约为 1.5 亿美元。OpenAI 希望融资资金是这个数字的 40 多倍。因此，为大语言模型提供支持的并非风险投资行业，而是科技巨头。自 2019 年以来，微软已向 OpenAI 投资 130 亿美元；今年，亚马逊向 OpenAI 的主要竞争对手之一 Anthropic 投资了 40 亿美元。
The tech giants do not just offer money. Their cloud services provide computing power to train the startups’ LLMs and also distribute their products—OpenAI’s via Microsoft’s Azure cloud, and Anthropic’s via Amazon Web Services. Microsoft is expected to invest more in OpenAI’s latest funding round. Apple (which will offer ChatGPT to iPhone users) and Nvidia (which sells huge numbers of chips to OpenAI) are also likely to take part. So are sovereign-wealth funds, demonstrating the vast sums of money that are required for a seat at the table.
科技巨头们不仅提供巨额资金，还通过云服务为初创公司训练大语言模型提供计算能力，并分发他们的产品 ——如OpenAI 和Azure 云，Anthropic 和 AWS。在 OpenAI 的最新一轮融资中，预计微软将投入更多资金。苹果（将向 iPhone 用户提供 ChatGPT）和英伟达（向 OpenAI 出售大量芯片）也可能参与。主权财富基金也可能跟投。这表明要在生成式人工智能领域占有一席之地需要巨额资金投入。
A few venture investors are undeterred by the high entrance fee. OpenAI’s fundraising is being led by Thrive Capital, an investment firm based in New York that has made other big investments in highly valued startups, including Stripe, a payments company most recently valued at $65bn. Big Silicon Valley investors such as Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz helped provide part of the $6bn raised in May by Mr Musk’s xAI, and contributed to the $1bn raised this month by Safe Superintelligence, a model builder led by Ilya Sutskever, a former founder of OpenAI, that currently has negligible revenues.
少数风险投资者并没有被高昂的投资金额吓倒。OpenAI 融资由总部位于纽约的投资公司 Thrive Capital 牵头，该公司曾经斥巨资投资高估值初创公司，如最近估值已达650 亿美元的支付公司 Stripe。红杉资本（Sequoia Capital）和 Andreessen Horowitz 等大型硅谷投资者参投了了5 月份马斯克 60 亿美元的 xAI 融资，同时参投了本月 Ilya Sutskever 领导的 Safe Superintelligence 的 10 亿美元融资。Safe Superintelligence 是一家模型构建商，老板Sutskever 曾是 OpenAI 的创始人之一，目前收入可以忽略不计。
But the size of the sums involved means some VCs are adopting a new modus operandi. Typically venture firms have sprayed capital thinly across an array of startups, knowing that if a few strike it rich, the returns will eclipse what is lost on those that do not. In the generative-AI era, where startups with access to the most capital, computing power, data and researchers have a big advantage, some are betting more on those that are already well-established, instead of kissing a lot of frogs.
但涉及巨额资金意味着一些风投公司需要采用一种新的风险投资运作方式。通常情况下，风投公司会将资金分散投资于很多初创公司，如果有几家公司大获成功，就可以弥补其他失败公司的损失。而在生成式人工智能时代，由于初创公司获得了巨额资金、计算能力、数据和研究人员，从而具有很大优势，因此一些风险投资公司会抛弃之前的广撒网的方式，而是更多地押注于那些已经成熟的初创公司。
The second big challenge to recent VC investment practice comes from how the new technology scales. Funding LLMs is coming to look more like the early days of Silicon Valley, when venture capitalists invested in companies cracking tough scientific problems, such as chipmakers, than the more recent trend of backing internet startups.
第二个重大冲击时新技术的扩展方式。大语言模型融资越来越像是早期的硅谷，当时风险投资人会投资于芯片制造商等破解棘手科学问题的公司，而不是后来对互联网初创公司的支持。
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