软件行业：「Token Shock」会阻碍AI普及吗

Richard Nguyen+33142135422 richard.nguyen@bernsteinsg.comPeterWeed+19173448390peter.weed@bernsteinsg.comMark Shmulik+19173448508mark.shmulik@bernsteinsg.comHarshita Rawat,CFA+19173448485harshita.rawat@bernsteinsg.comStacy A.Rasgon, Ph.D.+1213559 5917 stacy.rasgon@bernsteinsg.comMarkC.Newman+12128457822mark.newman@bernsteinsg.comNikhilDevnani,CFA+19173448425nikhil.devnani@bernsteinsg.comMadisonRezaei+19173448622 madison.rezaei@bernsteinsg.comGautamChhugani+912268421416gautam.chhugani@bernsteinsg.comLaurentYoon+19173448502 laurentyoon@bernsteinsg.comFiroz Valliji, CFA+19173448316 firoz.vallj@bernsteinsg.comShelly Tang, CFAA+19173448342 shelly.tang@bernsteinsg.com have all the questions but Bernstein's US and European Softwareteams havepulled ourproverbial heads togetherand giveyou ourperspective. Hopefully you find this helpful. Mark L.Moerdler, Richard Nguyen,and Peter Weed public launch of ChatGPT v3.5 in late 2022 and v4.0 /v4.0o in H12023 (depending on which model you consider really "first" to drivebroad awareness/adoption)and sincethen ithas createdmultipletsunamis shifting global spending toward building Al datacenters;going to be eaten by Al; creating billionaires and trillionaires and somuch more. All of this investment and disruption has been driven bythe belief that GenAl adoption is going to be huge and while there isno disagreementthatadoption is alreadystrong (see Ramp Al Index)the continuing investment cycle argues that Gen Al's impact will beeven moremassive andwill bequite impactful across virtually everyindustry and in everyone's personal lives Thefundamental problem is that GenAl and Agents are notcostfree - someone is paying for it. With the launch of ChatGPT followedvery quickly by GenAl capabilities in most existing search tools, allwith generous free to use models, consumers started to becomeaccustomed to free access. It wasn't just the Al Labs and searchengines... lots of "Born in Al" startups were created with GenAl andAgents built in and,taking apage out oftheearly days of search,manyof the at least early consumer centric Al-tools were free- lookinginto revenue at some point in the future. In fact, depending on thetool, there was at least initially no advertisements. Sure, there werepremium editions, but most people coulddo everythingthey wantedto without the paid-for premium editions. Even if they were paying, itwas a fixed unlimited usage subscription (until recently)frequently atrecognizablebroadlyconsumer-friendlypricelevelslike$19/29/99permonth-thecosts didn't seem excessiveforthe value delivered.There were discussions of ads, but unless GenAl chatbots wereaddedto existing search tools advertising as a monetization strategyis still quite limited. Experts,pundits and industryleaders almost seemtobecompetingas to howbig a number they can create, whether in GPUs sold overthe next few years; datacenter spending; job disrupted; or revenuescreated or lost. Not surprising this has created some roller coastersin the market as one day a company (tech or not) is going to be thebig winner and the next it will be a loser. Even for those with graduate degrees in the space and dozens ofyears in the industry the speed of innovation and the even fasterspeed of commentaryis daunting. It wasn't just consumer looking for free.As GenAl capabilitiesexpanded from consumer into commercial the monetizationstrategies ofwellfundedstartups andmany enterpriseapp vendors(e.g. Adobe) used free or freemium models. Even if there was a paid In today's Weekend Tech Byte we are going to focus on a new andpotentially disruptive trend -"Token Shock" driven by the shift of Altoconsumption pricing (tokens)andwhatitcould mean forAladoption. announced ~4,800 layoffs or~2.1% ofworkforce,Salesforcecut ~4,000 service desk, Meta laid of ~8,000 employees) haveannounced layoffs that included developers (and otherroles)butthetotal numbershavebeen relatively smalltodate.Nottomention,theyseemto largely impactcompanies perceived as“overtheir skis"onhiring,and perhaps"Alwashing"necessaryand overdueheadcountreductions. "Born-in-Al"vendor.Companies andtheirusers could largelypartakeof the advantages of Al without having to think about the budgetimpact. Again, the plan, we believe, was to drive adoption (we don't243,3802nd. organizations expected that there would be fees for Al, but theexpectation was that the savings generated by GenAl would morethan offset the costs and that they would have enough time to trybefore having to pay anything significant. This does not mean theywere happy to throw money at pilots and internal projects but theexpectation,webelieve,wasthatcosts wouldbe quitemanageable the maturation of Al as a business with Al companies having toshow revenue and not just eyeballs,all-you-can-eat subscriptions isstarting to be replaced with some form of consumption. [more onthe drivers of the change in monetization in a moment) Suddenlybuyers are starting to see real costassociated with the tools andthecosts