Overall, the AI investment represents one of the largest infusions of capital into a specific technology in Silicon Valley's history, and comes as other companies, governments and individual consumers focus on AI. technology companies further entrenched in the center of the U.S. economy. These companies provide AI tools and software.
The huge investments are also boosting projections of how much energy the United States will need in the coming years. In West Virginia, an old coal-fired power plant that was scheduled for closure will continue to operate, sending energy to a huge and growing data center hub in neighboring Virginia.
“We are committed to making the investments necessary to stay on the cutting edge,” Google's Porat said on a conference call Thursday. Google CEO Sundar Pichai added: “This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity.”
Even before OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022, major technology companies were already spending steadily on AI research and development. But chatbots' instant success suddenly led major companies to spend even more. Venture capitalists were also pouring money into the space, with startups with just a few employees raising hundreds of millions of dollars to build their own AI tools.
The boom has driven up the price of high-end computer chips needed to train and run complex AI algorithms, driving up prices for Big Tech companies and startups alike. There is also a shortage of AI engineers and researchers, some of whom are paid millions of dollars.
Nvidia, the computer chip maker whose graphics processing units (GPUs) are essential to training AI, reported sales of about $24 billion this quarter, compared to $8.3 billion in the same quarter two years ago. We expect profits. The strong increase in revenue has led investors to drive up the company's stock price significantly. The company is now the third most valuable company in the world after Microsoft and Apple.
Some of last year's AI hype is back on the ground again. Not all AI startups that have raised significant amounts of venture capital funding still exist. Concerns about AI growing faster than humans can keep up appear to have largely subsided. But the revolution is here to stay, and the rush to invest in AI is already starting to help boost revenue for Microsoft and Google.
Microsoft's revenue for the quarter was $61.9 billion, an increase of 17% from the same period last year. Google's revenue for the quarter rose 15% to $80.5 billion.
Interest in AI brought in new customers and helped Google's cloud revenue grow, with the company beating analysts' expectations. Shares soared about 12% in aftermarket trading. CFO Hood said Microsoft has such high demand for its AI services that it cannot currently keep up with demand.
The challenge for Meta is to build AI while also assuring investors that they will ultimately make money from it. Microsoft and Google sell access to AI through their huge cloud software businesses, but Meta is taking a different path. The company doesn't have a cloud business and is instead looking for ways to make its AI freely available to other companies while incorporating the technology into its social media products. Earlier this month, Meta integrated his AI capabilities into social networks such as his Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp messaging platforms. Investors were skeptical, and the company's stock price fell more than 10% after the company raised its forecast for spending in 2024 to up to $40 billion.
“Building cutting-edge AI will be a larger undertaking than any other experience we've added to the app, and this will likely take several years,” said Mark, CEO of Meta. Zuckerberg said in a conference call on Wednesday. “Historically, investing in building new scale experiences like this in our apps has been a very good long-term investment, both for us and for the investors who stick with us. was.”
