Kỷ nguyên “Xây chậm, làm lớn”: Big Tech Mỹ chi 102,5 tỉ USD xây đế chế AI hạ tầng khổng lồ

  • Các công ty công nghệ lớn của Mỹ đang bước vào kỷ nguyên hạ tầng”, nơi đầu tư khổng lồ vào trung tâm dữ liệu, nhà máy, bất động sản và năng lượng trở thành chiến lược cạnh tranh cốt lõi.

  • Trong quý gần nhất, 7 công ty công nghệ lớn (“The Magnificent 7”) đã chi kỷ lục 102,5 tỉ USD cho chi tiêu vốn (capex), với phần lớn đến từ Meta, Google, Microsoft và Amazon. Trong khi Apple, Nvidia và Tesla chỉ chi khoảng 6,7 tỉ USD.

  • Nhà phân tích Paul Kedrosky cho biết đầu tư AI hiện đã vượt qua đầu tư hạ tầng viễn thông thời kỳ dot-com, trở thành yếu tố tăng trưởng lớn nhất của kinh tế Mỹ trong hai quý gần nhất – thậm chí vượt cả chi tiêu tiêu dùng.

  • TSMC (Đài Loan) chi 10 tỉ USD mỗi quý; Foxconn đang xây dựng nhà máy tại Ấn Độ cho Apple, cho thấy đầu tư hạ tầng AI mang tính toàn cầu.

  • Các công ty không còn chỉ làm phần mềm, mà đang “vertical integration” – kiểm soát cả hạ tầng vật lý, giống như thời kỳ của Rockefeller hay Carnegie với đường sắt và thép.

  • Microsoft đang xây trung tâm dữ liệu trị giá 3,3 tỉ USD tại Wisconsin. Một số trung tâm dữ liệu còn được xây trên nền các nhà máy thép cũ, do gần nguồn năng lượng.

  • OpenAI gặp khó khăn trong việc cạnh tranh vì thiếu hạ tầng riêng và phải phụ thuộc vào vốn đầu tư liên tục. Meta đã “hút máu” kỹ sư từ OpenAI bằng mức lương khủng.

  • Trong khi đó, Apple và Nvidia ít chi capex hơn nhưng kiểm soát chuỗi cung ứng thông qua các hợp đồng sản xuất quy mô lớn.

  • Cạnh tranh nhân lực AI khốc liệt, với các thương vụ “acqui-hire” trị giá hàng trăm triệu USD và mức lương vượt chuẩn.

  • Giáo sư H.W. Brands cảnh báo các công ty này tuy giàu có nhưng sử dụng rất ít lao động, và việc chống độc quyền thường chỉ diễn ra sau khi họ đã thống trị thị trường.


📌 Các gã khổng lồ công nghệ Mỹ đang chi hơn 100 tỉ USD mỗi quý để xây dựng đế chế hạ tầng AI tương tự đường sắt và thép thế kỷ 19, tạo lợi thế áp đảo và khó bị cạnh tranh. Khi OpenAI gặp khó, Microsoft, Meta và Amazon dấn sâu vào cuộc chơi hạ tầng toàn cầu, biến trung tâm dữ liệu thành vũ khí chiến lược trong cuộc đua công nghệ với Trung Quốc.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/silicon-valley-ai-infrastructure-capex-cffe0431

Silicon Valley’s New Strategy: Move Slow and Build Things

Big tech companies are becoming infrastructure companies—just like the steel and railroad giants of old

Christopher Mims
 ET
 
James Steinberg
There’s a point in every technological cycle when engineers and inventors are rapidly innovating. The spoils go to those who “move fast and break things,” to quote 2010s-era Mark Zuckerberg.
We’re now entering a phase in which the giants win because they own, and continue to build out, the physical assets that make mature technologies accessible.
Call it an “age of infrastructure,” in which companies spend vast sums on actual stuff. Primarily that’s the gigantic data centers filled with tiny chips, and everything that connects and cools them, but it also includes factories, real estate and energy.
It’s reminiscent of the age of business titans and “robber barons” who dominated railroads, steel and other enterprises. And as happened then, today’s massive companies, with their ability to spend (and borrow), are making their moats even deeper and wider. Even formidable competitors, such as OpenAI, are hard-pressed to keep up.
A look at one key line item in company earnings reports—capital expenditures—shows that the most valuable tech companies are buying and building stuff at a record pace. The Magnificent 7 tech firms have collectively spent a record $102.5 billion on capex in their most recent quarters, nearly all from Meta, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft and Amazon. (Apple, Nvidia and Tesla together contributed a mere $6.7 billion.)
Investor and tech pundit Paul Kedrosky says that, as a percentage of gross domestic product, spending on AI infrastructure has already exceeded spending on telecom and internet infrastructure from the dot-com boom—and it’s still growing. He also argues that one explanation for the U.S. economy’s ongoing strength, despite tariffs, is that spending on IT infrastructure is so big that it’s acting as a sort of private-sector stimulus program.
Capex spending for AI contributed more to growth in the U.S. economy in the past two quarters than all of consumer spending, says Neil Dutta, head of economic research at Renaissance Macro Research, citing data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
A global accounting of this infrastructure spending would be even bigger, as it would include capex from these companies’ most important partners. Foxconn has recently spent big building out factories for Apple in India, which just supplanted China as the source of the majority of U.S.-destined iPhones, according to Canalys. And the world’s largest chip manufacturer, TSMC, spent about $10 billion on capex in its most recent quarter.
In the not-too-distant past, when Facebook, Microsoft and its competitors mostly produced code, salary and stock compensation was a much bigger proportion of their spending. For these companies to continue growing, they are now vertically integrating and owning more of what it takes to run their businesses.

Construction on the first phase of Microsoft’s $3.3 billion data center in Mount Pleasant, Wis., is expected to be completed in 2026.
This hasn’t exactly happened overnight, says Patrick Moorhead, an industry analyst, who calls what’s happening now “planet-scale infrastructure.”
Back in 2003, when Moorhead was an executive at AMD, his company sold Google some of its earliest systems for building out its data-center infrastructure as cheaply as possible. What had been expensive boxes—basically PCs on steroids—at the beginning of this century evolved in two decades into vast arrays of rack servers that facilitate today’s internet and the explosive growth of AI supercomputers. All of this IT infrastructure and its support systems are our generation’s railroads and steel mills, he adds.
OpenAI, arguably the most well funded startup, still has difficulty competing with the giants. It depends on continuous and gigantic infusions of investor cash, even as the fast-following big-tech companies peel off its customers and talent. OpenAI has struggled recently to realize its dream of a gigantic AI data center called Stargate, and Meta has lured away some of its engineers with eye-watering pay packages.
Meanwhile, Apple and Nvidia spend less on capex but direct huge contracts for chips and manufacturing to partners, so they’re able to monopolize the attention and output of those partners. And Tesla is historically no slouch, known for spending big on factories, a charging network, even mining operations.
In an almost too-perfect parallel to the bygone age of John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan, some of today’s power-hungry data centers are actually being put on the sites of former steel mills, because of their proximity to energy sources.
It’s important not to take these comparisons too far, cautions H.W. Brands, a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin and an authority on the late 19th century titans of industry. One difference: While they might spend big on infrastructure, today’s most valuable companies are lightly staffed. “The striking thing about these companies is compared with their wealth, how few people they employ,” he adds.
An area where we can draw a strong parallel, says Brands, is in antitrust enforcement: Now, as then, it only tends to happen long after companies reach their peak size and power. In terms of competition, there are hardly any signs these companies will be disrupted anytime soon, says Moorhead.
In addition to their record capex spending, many big tech companies are also engaged in an all-out war for certain kinds of talent, particularly in AI—railroads need engineers. Hundreds of millions of dollars are changing hands in “acqui-hires” and talent poaching. This war for talent is becoming yet another way that advantages accrue to the biggest tech companies with the deepest pockets.
The lesson in all this: When there isn’t much regulation, and competition is limited to a handful of coexisting hegemons, the biggest threats come from overseas. The U.S. and China are, of course, locked in a contest for global industrial dominance. America once had an easy lead—but its continuing success is no longer guaranteed.

Không có file đính kèm.

21

Thảo luận

© Sóng AI - Tóm tắt tin, bài trí tuệ nhân tạo