"The Internet Empress" releases the first "AI Trend Report," stating that the pace of AI transformation is "unprecedented."

Revered as the "Internet Queen", Mary Meeker is back on the scene, this time setting her sights on the AI dominator OpenAI. Meeker is the founder and general partner of the venture capital firm Bond, and was previously known as the "Internet Queen" for her annual internet trends report. Before founding Bond, she led Kleiner Perkins' growth business from 2010 to 2019, investing in companies like Facebook, Spotify, Ring, and Block (which was then Square). In her heavyweight report titled "Trends Artificial Intelligence (AI)", spanning 340 pages, the legendary analyst who accurately predicted the rise of Google and Apple clearly states that the growth rate of artificial intelligence exceeds any previous technological wave. This report continues Meeker's grand vision, covering everything from the invention of printing to Roomba vacuum cleaners and the application of Siasun Robot & Automation, attempting to paint a panoramic picture of the AI era. The report points out that the development of AI is unprecedented, with explosive growth in users, usage, and capital expenditures, profoundly changing the global internet landscape and modes of work. Unprecedented pace of AI transformation Meeker uses the term "unprecedented" 51 times in the report to describe the speed of development, adoption, investment, and usage of AI. For example, ChatGPT reached 800 million users in just 17 months, a growth rate that surpasses any technological advancement in human history. ChatGPT is also gaining market share in search, with an annual search volume reaching 365 billion times, 5.5 times that of Google. But this unprecedented rate of adoption also signals an unprecedented level of competition. Technological advantage will global dominance Most notably, Meeker's assessment of the geopolitical impact of AI stands out. She frankly states that "AI leadership may determine geopolitical dominance", implying that technological competition has risen to the level of national strategy. For investors, this means that AI-related investments should not only consider commercial returns but also assess the potential impact of geopolitical risks on asset allocation. Indian users support OpenAI's valuation myth Data from the report shows that India has become the largest source of monthly active users for ChatGPT, surpassing even those in the United States. This means that the sky-high valuation of OpenAI, reaching hundreds of billions of dollars, is largely due to the contributions from Indian users. This discovery is quite ironic - a giant in AI headquartered in San Francisco, piled up with venture capital from Silicon Valley, relies on the user growth engine from emerging markets across the ocean. More importantly, Indian users are much more sensitive to prices than American users, providing an excellent entry point for low-cost competitors. The harsh reality behind the cost plummet The report reveals that while the cost of training top AI models has soared 2400 times over the past eight years, the cost of AI inference has plummeted by 99.7% in just two years. This scissor effect is reshaping the rules of the entire industry. As hardware costs plummet rapidly - the energy consumption per token for NVIDIA's 2024 Blackwell GPU is 105,000 times lower than that of the 2014 Kepler GPU - lightweight models focused on customized scenarios are showing fatal competitive advantages. They do not require the massive investment that OpenAI does, yet they can provide "good enough" service in specific scenarios. The combination of the two has led to a rapid decline in the cost of top AI products after their introduction. This is good news for consumers, but it also means that companies hoping to fully leverage technology for commercial gain will need more robust financial strength. Rise of Chinese AI companies, burn rate model facing survival crisis Data shows that the expected annual total revenue of the top three AI companies in the US - OpenAI, xAI, and Anthropic - has reached $12 billion, but they have collectively raised $95 billion in funding. Meeker bluntly points out that the valuation of OpenAI compared to its revenue "looks expensive". The report notes that with the rapid rise of Chinese models and open-source alternatives, these "aristocratic" AI companies are not only facing cost pressures but also fundamental challenges to their business models. For investors, Meeker's advice is to "only invest the amount you are willing to lose." She states: "Putting all your eggs in one basket is risky, because everything is on the rise now and everything seems to be going well - until one day things suddenly turn around." This article is selected from "Wall Street See News", written by Li Xiaoyin, edited by GMTEight: Song Zhiying.