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Showing posts sorted by date for query consumer spending. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Thursday, October 24, 2024

High AI Capex is Worrisome, But "Winner Take All" is the Prize

It is not hard to find estimates of investment in U.S. artificial intelligence infrastructure (computing capabilities) in the range of $300 billion or more between 2023 and 2030. IDC analysts have suggested $300 billion in investments between 2023 and 2026.


Nor is it hard to find critics who worry about uncontrolled spending without a clear revenue model. On the other hand, leaders of firms attempting to become leaders in the generative AI model business are likely to keep in mind the “winner take all” dynamic we have seen in the recent internet era, where just one or a few firms emerged as leaders in new markets. 


They might point to:

  • Amazon's years of heavy investment to dominate e-commerce

  • Google's massive spending to establish search leadership

  • Cloud providers' huge datacenter investments

  • Meta's acquisition strategy in social media.


In fact, many markets show scant ability to support three providers, as the market leader has twice the share--and up to an order of magnitude more-share compared to  the number-two provider.


Market

Dominant Player

Market Share

Runner-up

Market Share

Search Engines

Google

91.9%

Bing

3.0%

Desktop Browsers

Chrome

65.72%

Safari

18.22%

Mobile Browsers

Chrome

66.17%

Safari

23.28%

Social Media

Facebook

2.9B users

YouTube

2.5B users

E-commerce

Amazon

37.8% (US)

Walmart

6.3% (US)

Video Streaming

YouTube

2.5B users

Netflix

231M subscribers

Music Streaming

Spotify

31%

Apple Music

15%

Ride-hailing (US)

Uber

68%

Lyft

32%

Cloud Services

AWS

32%

Azure

22%

Mobile OS

Android

71.8%

iOS

27.6%


So even if McKinsey estimates AI infrastructure spending will exceed $500 billion between 2023 and 2030, and even if many of those investments do nor produce the expected results, model suppliers have incentives to risk quite a lot, knowing that there is a small  prize for being second best. 


Gartner forecasts global AI infrastructure investments will surpass $250 billion annually by 2030. 


The OECD estimates investments in AI infrastructure across industries, will reach $1 trillion by 2030, across the OECD countries. Bloomberg predicts that the global AI infrastructure market will $700 billion by 2030.


On the other hand, most of that investment will be by end users and others in the value chain, not the generative AI model providers. 


And some estimates made in 2023 might be considered conservative in 2024. Morgan Stanley’s  "The Economics of AI” study, published in October 2023 suggested more than $200 billion in AI infrastructure investments by 2030, including:

  • Data centers: $125B

  • Networking infrastructure: $50B

  • Chip fabrication: $25B

  • Cooling systems: $10B.


Boston Consulting Group in December 2023 suggested there would be $235 billion cumulative investments in 

  • Data center buildout: 45%

  • Compute infrastructure: 35%

  • Power infrastructure: 20%. 


The Goldman Sachs "AI Infrastructure Report," published in September 2023 estimated $275 billion in  cumulative investment, including:

  • Semiconductor investment: $100B

  • Data centers: $115B

  • Power systems: $35B

  • Network upgrades: $25B. 


The caution, though, is that early estimates of the size of new technology markets often lead to overinvestment across the value chain. 


Study/Report

Date

Publisher

Key Conclusions

The Dot-Com Bubble Burst: Causes and Implications

2001

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

Overinvestment in internet startups led to a speculative bubble that burst in 2000. Many companies were overvalued despite having no profitability.

Boom and Bust: The Telecommunications Investment Bubble

2002

Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

Overinvestment in telecom infrastructure during the late 1990s led to a major industry downturn, with unsustainable levels of capital spending.

The Case for Less Innovation

2017

Harvard Business Review

Many companies overinvest in unproven technologies without clear demand, resulting in failed projects and wasted resources.

Lessons from the Clean Tech Bubble

2016

MIT Energy Initiative

Overinvestment in cleantech (2005-2011) led to massive failures, with many companies being too early to market and receiving excessive venture capital.

Investing in Innovation: Creating a Research and Innovation Policy That Works

2010

The NESTA Foundation (UK)

Over-investment in R&D for new technologies can create inefficiencies and fail to produce proportional economic benefits if not managed strategically.

The Nanotechnology Investment Bubble

2005

Journal of Nanoparticle Research

Speculative investments in nanotechnology during the early 2000s led to unmet expectations, as many products were not commercially viable.

Unleashing Productivity: Overinvestment in Information Technology

2005

McKinsey Global Institute

Overinvestment in IT during the late 1990s and early 2000s did not yield expected productivity gains, with firms often adopting technology prematurely.

The Illusions of Overinvestment in AI

2021

Brookings Institution

Many companies overinvest in artificial intelligence without clear applications, leading to inflated expectations and unrealized returns.

The Biotechnology Bubble: When Science and Finance Collide

2004

Nature Biotechnology

Excessive capital flow into biotech during the 1990s led to overvaluation, with many firms failing to achieve meaningful breakthroughs.


In recent years we have also seen examples of overinvestment by many platform suppliers as well. 


Technology

Company/Industry

Year

Description of Over-Investment

Artificial Intelligence

IBM Watson

2011-2022

IBM invested billions in Watson AI for healthcare, but struggled to generate significant revenue and ultimately sold off the health assets

Virtual Reality

Meta (Facebook)

2014-present

Meta has invested over $36 billion in VR/AR technology with limited returns, facing skepticism about the metaverse vision

Blockchain

Various

2017-2018

Many companies rushed to invest in blockchain during the crypto boom, only to scale back or abandon projects when the hype died down

Autonomous Vehicles

Uber

2016-2020

Uber invested heavily in self-driving technology, spending over $1 billion before selling the unit after a fatal accident and regulatory challenges

3D Printing

3D Systems

2013-2015

The company aggressively acquired 3D printing startups, leading to over $1.3 billion in losses and a stock price crash when consumer adoption didn't materialize

Cloud Computing

HP

2011-2012

HP's $11 billion acquisition of Autonomy for cloud services led to an $8.8 billion write-down 


So the rationale for investing heavily to secure the leading position in the generative AI model business is a reflection of the possible “winner take all” character of application and platform markets, where the number-one provider dominates. 


And since market share and profit margin generally are related, the rewards for market leadership also are significant. In many capital-intensive markets, the profit margin of the top provider is double that of number two. 


And provider number two can have margins double that of provider number three.


Tuesday, September 10, 2024

Mobile Generative AI Will Be a Huge Driver of Usage

Eventually, the leading generative artificial intelligence apps used by consumers will winnow down from hundreds to a few, though many platforms will likely find niche uses in some industries, market segments, job functions and use cases.


One important difference could arise in the mobile domain, compared to larger-screen use cases, and the reason is simply the huge amount of interactive app usage that now happens on mobile devices, compared to all other screens. 


User Type

Mobile Devices

PCs

Consumers

5-6 hours/day

2-3 hours/day

Business Professionals

3-4 hours/day

5-6 hours/day


Perhaps more important is the amount of data consumed on mobile platforms. While it might be difficult to directly correlate “value” with “data volume,” data consumption is connected with usage volume. Generally speaking, the volume of consumer data used on mobile devices is twice as much as on PCs, for example. 


User Type

Mobile Devices

PCs

Consumers

10-20 GB/month

5-10 GB/month

Business Professionals

20-30 GB/month

10-20 GB/month


That usage is then correlated with the volume of advertising spending on mobile and PC platforms. 


Among the big shifts in U.S. advertising spending in the internet era is not simply the growth of share taken by digital media, but also the share taken by mobile venues, which already are as much as 65 percent of all digital media advertising. 


Venue

Spending 

(Billions USD)

Market Share (%)

Digital

233.4

56.7

Television

73.7

17.9

Radio

21.9

5.3

Out-of-Home

19.5

4.7

Print

15.6

3.8

Other

12.7

3.1


source: Statista, Seeking Alpha 


That suggests a huge opportunity for generative AI  use cases on mobiles, as well, assuming that GenAI winds up being a core functionality of most highly-used consumer-facing apps. 

source: Andreessen Horowitz 


source: Andreessen Horowitz 


And to the extent that the costs of GenAI usage for app and experience providers matters, open source models should, over time, increase their share of the market. Already, in mid-2024, enterprise user /.,mnbvcz+net promoter scores for open source GenAI models have rapidly approached those of proprietary models. 

source: Andreessen Horowitz 


As always for new markets, early market share often is not predictive of developed or mature market leadership. Eventual leaders often are not among the early leaders. Also, definitions of “active” users might vary. Some might include users who have accessed a model only once; others will have varying levels of persistent usage that are minimums for the purpose of defining active users. 


Model

Estimated Active Users

OpenAI (GPT-4, GPT-3.5)

100+ million

Google (LaMDA, PaLM, Gemini))

50+ million

Meta (LLaMA)

30+ million

Microsoft (Azure OpenAI Service)

20+ million

Stability AI (Stable Diffusion)

10+ million

Midjourney

10+ million


The term "active user" can include:

  • Frequency of Use: How often a user interacts with the AI model. This could be measured by the number of prompts or requests submitted within a specific timeframe (e.g., daily, weekly, monthly).

  • Duration of Use: The amount of time a user spends interacting with the AI model during a session or over a period.

  • Type of Interaction: The nature of the user's interactions, such as text prompts, image generation requests, or code completion.

  • Conversion Rate: The percentage of users who take a desired action, such as creating an account, subscribing to a premium service, or sharing content.

  • Engagement Metrics: Measures of user engagement, such as click-through rates, time spent on the platform, and social sharing.


For OpenAI, “active users” are typically defined as those who have interacted with the model within a specific timeframe, such as the past month or year.


Google's definition of "active user" considers frequency of use and engagement metrics. Meta's definition of "active user" might be similar to its definitions for other products, focusing on user engagement and interaction.


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