Original link: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1559
Microsoft covered by the halo of OpenAI
Microsoft gave OpenAI $1 billion in 2019. The two companies are so different that they even seem to operate with opposite ends.
One is mature, stable and profitable, one is young, idealistic, and burns money for a long time; one operates along the boundaries of market power and regulation, and operates outside the norms and constraints of traditional business models and governance structures; one regards AI as enhancing its core A means to products and services, new sources of revenue and growth, one that sees AI as an end in itself: fulfilling its grand vision of creating beneficial and trustworthy AI services that prevent abuse by big corporations like Microsoft and Google.
Recently, OpenAI has occupied the media space because of GPT-4. Microsoft came back with AI Copilot, an office suite released on Friday. Many people say that Microsoft’s investment value. But money alone is not enough to do this.
Last time we said that Wall Street regarded Microsoft as an old man ten years ago, followed by Nadella’s understanding of trends, Ballmer’s channels and customer base for Office, and Gates’ understanding of technology and business 40 or 50 years ago. The foresight of the trend leaves enough room for the so-called turnaround.
Microsoft in 2012 couldn’t imagine itself without Windows. In 2018, CEO Nadella merged the “Windows and Devices Department” into two business divisions after being dismantled, and no longer set up a separate Windows department. During the period, through transactions and acquisitions, Nadella brought various new services, platforms, communities, and content libraries to Microsoft-none of which needed to be bound to specialized hardware devices-such as the binding of PCs and Windows.
Business analyst Ben Thompson said that hardware in the mobile Internet era has its own input methods, user expectations and limitations, and requires a customized experience rather than a one-size-fits-all. Microsoft seems to have not understood this before. The more one-size-fits-all, the greater the loss of customers.
“Microsoft’s best efforts (in 2013) should be focused on making Office, Server, and all of the other products less about Windows and more about what consumers want and the realities of computing,” Ben Thompson said.
Nearly a decade later, in 2022, Nadella spoke at a press conference about the company’s value proposition: Spend more time creating value and less time integrating and managing. He said, “Less time, less cost, less complexity, more innovation, more flexibility, more elasticity. Doing more with fewer resources doesn’t mean working harder Or work longer term—which doesn’t mean scaling either—it means applying technology to expand what you can do and ultimately what an organization can achieve within today’s constraints.”
More than a month later, OpenAI released ChatGPT. (Gong Fangyi)
The auto industry began to “subsidize tens of billions”
In 2017, there were about 70 car companies in China. Five years later, it was reduced to more than 50. Now, He Xiaopeng, chairman of Xiaopeng Motors, is worried that there may be only 25 left in five years, “meaning that no matter whether they sell 100,000, 500,000 or 700,000 vehicles a year, these car companies will not be able to survive in 5 to 15 years. He Xiaopeng said at the company’s fourth quarter performance meeting.
He Xiaopeng’s response method is to “innovate with technology and strictly control costs”, including reducing the cost of vehicle power and hardware systems by 25% year-on-year next year. The approach of his peers is – big price cuts.
The high growth of electric vehicle sales in 2022 will to a certain extent weaken the perception of weak overall car sales, giving people a feeling of “if you don’t buy it now, you will never be able to buy it again”. In 2022, China’s narrow-sense passenger car sales will increase by 1.9% year-on-year, and the Passenger Federation expects an increase of 2% this year.
Today, SAIC released a promotional poster with a subsidy of 3.7 billion yuan. In recent weeks, a large number of independent and joint venture car companies have implemented discounts ranging from 10% to 50% on some models, including direct price reductions, interest-free loans, and insurance subsidies. wait. The three independent brands with the largest sales volume in China, BYD, Changan, and Chery, also joined the price war. “China Times” said that more than 40 car companies have adjusted the prices of some of their products. “Wanlan Finance” tracked the following:
- SAIC Volkswagen announced a subsidy of 3.7 billion yuan to follow up the price cuts, ranging from 15,000 yuan to 50,000 yuan, covering a total of 20 models and lasting until April 30.
- SAIC Volkswagen Audi (employee internal purchase), the maximum drop is 160,000 yuan (A7L);
- SAIC MG: The maximum subsidy for 4 models is 15,000 yuan;
- Cadillac, the whole series of government and enterprise subsidies, the maximum subsidy is 130,000 yuan (CT6);
- Dongfeng joint venture series and Hubei Provincial government-enterprise joint subsidy (as of the end of March): Dongfeng Citroen up to 90,000 yuan (C6), Dongfeng Peugeot up to 40,000 yuan (Peugeot 508), Dongfeng Fengshen up to 40,000 yuan;
- Dongfeng Honda subsidizes up to 80,000 yuan in Sichuan and Chongqing; up to 85,000 yuan in Anhui;
- In the Hubei area, SAIC Volkswagen will pay up to 70,000 yuan, FAW Toyota will pay up to 50,000 yuan, and Buick will pay up to 70,000 yuan.
- Toyota bZ4X dropped 60,000 yuan;
- Nissan Arrow directly dropped 60,000 yuan;
- The price of all Ford electric horses has been reduced by 40,000 yuan;
Unknowingly, Chinese car companies may have created their own “ten billion subsidies”.
Among them, joint venture car companies are in a relatively more difficult position. In the traditional oil car market, they have to compete not only with the sinking BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Audi, but also with “leapfrog” independent car companies; in the electric car market, the identity that allowed joint ventures to make money in the past has now become a constraint— — In a fast-growing market, both domestic and foreign companies are more motivated to expand and strengthen their own brands, rather than blood transfusion for each other.
For example, the combined sales of GAC’s self-owned brands and GAC Aian last year were only 100,000 units behind GAC Honda; the annual sales of SAIC Volkswagen and SAIC-GM were only half of their peak levels, and the sales of SAIC’s self-owned passenger vehicles (excluding Wuling) reached a record high. The gap with SAIC-GM has narrowed to about 340,000 vehicles.
According to Wind data, the joint venture auto inventory coefficient rose above 2 at the end of February, which means that the inventory at the end of the month is twice the sales volume of the month. At the end of November last year, the number was as high as 2.21.
And each stock car not only symbolizes the cost and income of the car company, but also the receivables and payables of the upstream and downstream of the huge industry, as well as local employment, taxation and GDP. This is probably why when Hubei subsidized the Dongfeng joint venture brand before, it was required to buy local brands and return the subsidy after the full price.
- On March 15th, Hefei issued a new policy to promote consumption, purchasing new energy vehicles (need to scrap or sell old vehicles), with a maximum subsidy of 5,000 yuan per vehicle. As of the end of July.
- On March 17, the Chengdu Economic Development Zone (Longquanyi District) launched a car consumption activity, with a total subsidy of 100 million yuan and a cumulative maximum of 150,000 yuan for bicycles, covering brands: FAW-Volkswagen, FAW Toyota, Volvo, Lynk & Co, Hongqi, etc. The event runs until the end of June.
The pressure of self-owned brands (including new car brands) is also emerging. The car companies that were the first to transition to electric vehicles basically had huge growth plans at the beginning of last year, but few achieved them at the end of the year. During the period, Tesla cut prices several times and still achieved high gross profit, continuing to “educate” the market.
Li Xiang once said in 2020, “Most people haven’t figured out how Tesla won. They have already won the battery life, intelligence, and cost performance and have not changed any results.” The advantage of pulling is an excellent overcharging experience. Now, many people know Tesla’s winning method – low price – but this is based on industry-leading cost control, rather than self-impressed price cuts that sell more and more lose money. Few companies can catch up with the former, and the latter cannot last. (Gong Fangyi)
The cost of anti-globalization of the chip industry is high
Zhang Zhongmou, the founder of TSMC, warned that it will be very difficult for a big country to make cores, and it is becoming a reality little by little.
According to media reports, memory chip maker Micron’s new $100 billion factory in Syracuse, New York, USA is facing severe challenges-lack of people.
Micron’s new factory is expected to recruit 9,000 employees and add another 41,000 contractors and suppliers, but the local area is difficult to meet Micron’s demand. Over the past two decades, there has been a significant loss of local working-age population, with the number of residents aged 25 to 44 dropping by 10%.
In order to cope with the shortage of talents in advance, Micron has begun to cooperate with local community colleges and universities, and plans to invest 10 million US dollars in the training center to strengthen courses in engineering and technology and establish a pipeline for workers. Syracuse University also plans to increase undergraduate and graduate engineering enrollment by 50% in the next 3 to 5 years.
As early as 25 years ago, TSMC built an 8-inch wafer fab in Oregon, USA. The latter was described by Zhang Zhongmou as a nightmare due to its high cost and difficulty in recruiting workers. This time they were fully prepared and sent hundreds of engineers from Taiwan, China to the United States in advance, but they were still not acclimatized .
Yesterday, in a conversation with Chris Miller, the author of “Chip Wars”, Zhang Zhongmou reiterated his view that the era of globalization of the chip industry has come to an end.
He said that the United States is very competitive in the field of chip design, while Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea are strong in chip manufacturing, and talents and work culture in manufacturing cannot be replaced.
For example, Zhang Zhongmou said that if the equipment in an American factory breaks down at 1:00 in the middle of the night, engineers have to wait until 8:00 the next morning to repair it, and then the factory can resume production. But if at TSMC, if an engineer receives a call in the middle of the night, he will immediately rush back to the factory to solve the problem, and his wife will not ask too much.
But now, “globalization is dead and free trade is in jeopardy, which will increase the operating costs of the semiconductor industry.” (Qiu Hao)
Xiaopeng Motors expects revenue to fall by nearly 50% in the first quarter
In the fourth quarter of last year, several key operating indicators of Xiaopeng Motors declined, such as a 39.9% decline in total revenue (5.14 billion yuan) and a 43% decline in car sales revenue (4.66 billion yuan). Auto margins fell to 5.7%.
He Xiaopeng, chairman of Xiaopeng Motors, predicted in the conference call that the revenue in the first quarter of this year will be between 4 billion yuan and 4.2 billion yuan. The help of the facelifted P7i to performance will not appear until at least the second quarter. Therefore, the management estimates that it may take until the third quarter to see a year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter growth in sales.
“The product and management adjustment cycle of the auto industry this year is more difficult and longer than other industries such as the Internet, but I am still willing to sacrifice short-term sales to prepare for greater success in the medium and long term,” said He Xiaopeng.
Cost control is a must. Xiaopeng plans to reduce the cost of self-driving hardware materials by 50% next year, and reduce the cost of vehicle power and hardware systems by 25%. He Xiaopeng believes that “superior cost control ability” is the core ability for the company to win the competition in the future. In the fourth quarter of last year, the overall gross profit margin of Xiaopeng Motors was only 8.6%.
Falling raw material prices are seen as an opportunity. But it is also an opportunity for the entire industry. He Xiaopeng’s patience should have a limit. (Gong Fangyi)
Tech Weekly 丨 More powerful artificial intelligence is coming; a breakthrough in physics that cannot be reproduced
The most watched technological development this week is GPT-4 released by OpenAI. Compared with all similar products on the market, GPT-4 is a better product.
It’s not just that GPT-4 can write prose, poetry, code more creatively, understand pictures, hire people to bypass the restrictions of verification codes, etc.; it’s also that OpenAI is more closed and more like a mature commercial company. (For details on the new features of GPT-4 and how they are implemented, please see our previous coverage )
Immediately afterwards, Microsoft, which invested heavily in GPT-4, released Microsoft 365 Copilot, an office software artificial intelligence assistant product based on GPT-4 and other OpenAI technologies, on March 16. Microsoft showed in a video that it can help users better write documents, process tables, and make presentation documents (PPT). Microsoft said it will gradually open the beta to the public in the coming months. Many fear their jobs will be taken away.
The glow of GPT-4 and Microsoft overshadows the moves of their peers. Baidu released Wenxinyiyan, a Chatbot similar to ChatGPT this week, which can generally answer questions according to user requirements, but its spirituality is not as good as ChatGPT ( here is our evaluation ). Another move by Google, which announced this week that it would give users of Gmail and Google Docs direct access to products like ChatGPT, didn’t get much attention.
Microsoft also paid a price for releasing Microsoft 365 Copilot. According to market sources, in order to meet the new Bing and Office tools based on OpenAI technology, Microsoft has restricted the use of computing resources for other business teams, causing employee dissatisfaction.
In addition, the reverse follow-up to last week’s major breakthrough in physics was not noticed by many people in the GPT-4 carnival. Researchers at the University of Rochester in the United States announced last week that they had discovered a material that can superconduct at room temperature and near atmospheric pressure, causing many people to question it. Subsequently, many research teams tried to reproduce their research, and the results came out one after another this week. Three teams of scientists in China gave negative conclusions . (He Qianming)
Foxconn’s dream of building a car hits the rocks of reality
In January, US truck start-up Lordstown asked partner Foxconn to suspend production because its production costs exceeded its $65,000 target selling price. Weeks later at least one owner reported the vehicle wouldn’t start in cold weather, forcing Lordstown to issue a recall in February. On March 6, Lordstown said it would be forced to stop making its only pickup truck if it couldn’t work with an experienced automaker.
After Foxconn announced its entry into the automotive industry in 2020, it announced that it will occupy a 10% share of the electric vehicle market by 2025.
In 2021, Foxconn will enter the new car-making force Byton, form a joint venture with Geely, cooperate with Fisker to create a new brand Fisker, and then launch its own pure electric brand Foxtron. Foxconn spent $230 million to acquire an auto plant in Lordstown, Ohio, and agreed to manufacture the Endurance pickup for Lordstown. The layout is very broad and the ideal is very full, but Foxconn has not yet proved that it can produce an electric car with the quality of the iPhone.
In cooperation with Apple, Apple completed all the designs, providing the factory with detailed drawings, standards, processes, and even customized mechanical equipment. However, Foxconn, which entered the car manufacturing industry, has yet to find a partner like “Apple”. (Intern Fu Xiaoyu)
CHART OF THE DAY | Chinese companies lead in AI papers
According to media statistics, from 2012 to 2021, among the top ten companies with the most papers in the field of AI, there are 6 American companies and 4 Chinese companies, namely State Grid, Tencent, Huawei, and Ali.
It is generally believed that compared with academic or public research institutions, the spontaneous scientific research behavior of enterprises is more efficient, and the results are more easily transformed into applications. Especially large companies such as Tencent and Ali that are more market-oriented.
But there are limitations. The Nikkei News mentioned that the reason why companies invest is because in the field of AI, academic research and industrial applications are closely linked and it is easier to get returns. For example, State Grid is researching how to apply AI to explore oil resources, and pharmaceutical companies are researching how to use AI to develop new drugs. In contrast, basic research is often not favored because it is farther away from application and has more uncertain prospects.
The advantages are also concentrated in the top companies. Among the top ten companies, more than 60% of the papers come from the top three IBM, Microsoft, and Alphabet. In terms of quality and importance, papers from Google, Meta, and Microsoft have been cited far more than Tencent and Ali. In the emerging field of AI industrial application, in terms of medicine and medical treatment, AstraZeneca in the UK and GE Healthcare in the United States rank the top two; in terms of automobiles, Bosch, General Motors, Volkswagen, and Honda lead the way.
This reflects a dilemma. For late-developing countries, it is difficult to solve the incentive problem of enterprise scientific research by relying on the market alone; however, relying on public institutions faces challenges in the efficiency of scientific research and the transformation of achievements. (Lin Guangying)
OTHER NEWS
The central bank cut the RRR by 0.25 percentage points.
The People’s Bank of China announced today that it decided to reduce the deposit reserve ratio of financial institutions by 0.25 percentage points from March 27. After this reduction, the weighted average deposit reserve ratio of financial institutions is about 7.6%. This is the first time the central bank has lowered the RRR this year, slightly exceeding market expectations. Last year, the central bank cut the RRR twice by a total of 0.5 percentage points, releasing long-term funds of over 1 trillion yuan.
China’s Ministry of Finance fined Deloitte with a total of 210 million yuan.
According to the investigation and evidence collection by the Ministry of Finance, Huarong has serious distortions in accounting information to varying degrees from 2014 to 2019. However, when Deloitte audited Huarong, there were serious audit deficiencies such as failure to maintain professional skepticism, failure to effectively implement necessary audit procedures, and failure to obtain sufficient and appropriate audit evidence. The Ministry of Finance imposed administrative penalties on Deloitte and Huarong according to law. For Deloitte, the Deloitte head office was given a warning; the business of Deloitte Beijing branch was suspended for 3 months; the illegal income of Deloitte Beijing branch was confiscated and a total fine of 210 million yuan was imposed, and the Deloitte head office was jointly and severally liable; The certified public accountant and other responsible persons who signed the report shall be punished accordingly.
The growth rate of China’s catering revenue turned positive in the first two months.
According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, from January to February this year, contact consumption such as catering in China rebounded sharply. Among them, the national catering revenue increased by 9.2% year-on-year, the first time since April 2022 that the growth rate turned positive; movie box office revenue was 13.95 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.8%, and fell by more than 30% last year.
Baidu Carrot Kuaipao was approved to implement a fully driverless travel service in Beijing.
Carrot Kuaipao is Baidu Apollo’s self-driving travel service platform, providing driverless travel experience. Carrot Kuaipao invested a total of 10 fully driverless vehicles this time, operating in the 60-square-kilometer autonomous driving demonstration area in Beijing’s Yizhuang Economic Development Zone. Most of the self-driving cars that have been put into operation before Carrot Kuaipao need to be equipped with a safety officer who does not participate in the driving of the vehicle, but can take over the vehicle in emergencies.
BYD took a stake in Kunlun Chip, an AI chip company owned by Baidu.
The predecessor of Kunlun Chip was Baidu’s smart chip and architecture department. Currently, Baidu directly holds more than 70% of its shares and is the largest shareholder. BYD has frequently deployed in the field of intelligent driving since 2021. It first made a strategic investment in the AI chip company Horizon, and then established a joint venture company “Dipai Zhixing” with the self-driving company Momenta. Last year, BYD also led the investment in the lidar company Sagitar Juchuang, and chose Baidu as the supplier of the intelligent driving system.
The discount increased, Li Ning’s revenue increased year-on-year last year, and its gross profit margin declined.
Li Ning’s revenue in 2022 will increase by 14.3% year-on-year to 25.8 billion yuan, a significant slowdown in growth rate compared with 2021 (56.1%), and its gross profit rate will drop by 4.6 percentage points to 48.4%. The management said that it was affected by the epidemic and rising costs. In addition, the demand has weakened, so the discount was increased to digest the inventory. The current inventory level is good, and new product reserves have been increased to meet post-epidemic demand.
Shuidi’s turnaround in 2022 is also due to “cost reduction and efficiency increase”.
In the fourth quarter of last year, Shuidi’s revenue increased by 12.5% year-on-year to 680 million yuan, and its annual net profit was 608 million yuan, a sharp turnaround from the 2021 loss of 1.574 billion yuan. The insurance business, which accounts for more than 90% of the total revenue, exceeded 2.5 billion yuan last year. Profit mainly comes from the company’s cost control. Last year, its operating costs and expenses fell by more than half year-on-year.
The CEO and Chairman of Prada Group paid a low-key visit to Wuhan.
On March 14, Andrea Guerra, CEO of the newly appointed Prada Group at the beginning of this year, and Patrizio Bertelli, chairman of the board, appeared at the Prada store in Wuhan International Plaza. In February this year, the CEO of Gucci and the CEO of its parent company Kering Group also visited Chengdu, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Beijing successively, and met with government officials. In contrast, Prada’s trip was more low-key, and the news came out through the video of passers-by.
Samsonite’s net profit grew nearly 21 times last year, and its CEO expects a “very strong” summer travel season.
Its net sales in 2022 will increase by 40% year-on-year to US$2.9 billion, and its net profit will increase by nearly 21 times to about US$300 million. Expand investment. China’s luggage exports experienced a sharp drop in the early stages of the new crown epidemic in 2020, and basically recovered by the second quarter of last year. Samsonite’s Hong Kong stock price opened more than 5% higher today.
Tiger Global’s venture capital fund investment was written down by one-third last year.
Tiger Global wrote down its venture capital fund’s investment by 33% last year, wiping $23 billion off its value, according to people familiar with the matter, according to media reports. Still, it’s outperforming equity funds — its hedge funds and long-term funds are down 56% and 67%, respectively, last year . As we mentioned before , Tiger Global has an aggressive investment style, earning a lot during the upswing of the industry and losing a lot during the downswing.
The French government bypassed the legislative process and proposed to postpone the retirement age by 2 years.
Unable to secure sufficient support, the French government decided on Thursday to invoke a special constitutional power to bypass parliament and forcefully raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. triggered a new round of fierce opposition. The French government says reforms are necessary, with the current system relying on working people to pay pensions for retirees and deficits set to balloon as the population ages. The current ratio of working people to retired people in France is about 1.7:1, compared with about 4:1 50 years ago.
Wind, DM, etc. resume bond quotation data services.
Two days after the suspension of bond quotations by money brokers, information software such as Wind and DM resumed bond quotation data services on the 17th, but Qeubee has not yet resumed related services. Previously, Wind, Qeubee and others all stopped bond quotation services on the 15th. QB announced that external data services need to be suspended due to force majeure. Without a transparent information platform, the method of building a group quotation has greatly reduced the transaction efficiency of the bond market.
Kunlun Wanwei: AIGC has not yet generated actual income; shareholders: if you say you have it, you will have it.
Kunlun Wanwei replied to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange’s letter of concern on the 16th, saying that the company’s AIGC, artificial intelligence and other business products have not yet generated actual income, and the Chinese version of ChatGPT, which is jointly developed with Singulato, is expected to be released within this year, but whether it will be successfully realized in the future Commercialization is risky. After the announcement, Kunlun Wanwei’s stock price rose 2.4%, and investors had great expectations. Kunlun Wanwei has been laying out the AIGC field since 2020, and has accumulated a certain amount of technology in AI composition and other aspects.
Wall Street rescued the market, and 11 large US banks injected $30 billion into First Republic Bank.
Eleven large US banks including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley jointly announced that they will inject a total of US$30 billion into First Republic Bank. Previously, after Credit Suisse announced that it would borrow as much as 50 billion Swiss francs from the Swiss National Bank, European stocks rebounded from lows. The center of the banking crisis returned to the United States. First Republic Bank of the United States fell more than 35% before the market. However, the self-help “stimulant” of the US banking industry seems to have not completely resolved the crisis of confidence. First Republic Bank still fell nearly 21% before the market on the 17th.
The government rescued depositors but not shareholders, and the bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Bank affected many pension funds in Europe and the United States.
After Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank declared bankruptcy one after another, the U.S. regulators took over to keep depositors’ deposits, but refused to use tax money to save the bank itself—the bank shareholders suffered huge losses as a result. Several pension funds in the United States and Sweden have confirmed that they may lose tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. Alecta, Sweden’s largest pension fund, has invested approximately $849 million in Silicon Valley Bank and $283 million in Signature Bank, making it the fourth largest shareholder of Silicon Valley Bank. California Public Employees Retirement Fund, the largest pension fund in the United States, also invested about US$67 million and US$11 million in Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank respectively.
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