Hard Technology: Those who gain AI will gain the world, "pureblood" AI is the biggest winner | Year-End Summary Series (8)

It is clear that starting from 2023, the application of new AI technologies is still in the infrastructure cycle. At this stage, perhaps the future downstream will be the future king, but in the current cycle, the upstream is absolutely flourishing.

In 2024, AI, from the computing power, storage, packaging, foundry, and network connectivity at the beginning of the year, to the return to computing power by the end of the year, has simply transformed into ASIC computing power, and even the more peripheral electricity has been almost entirely speculated for a period.

The chip manufacturing leader NVIDIA is undoubtedly the biggest winner in this round of AI storm, with its stock price soaring from $50 at the beginning of the year to $140 now, an increase of up to 180%.

With a gross profit margin of 75%, NVIDIA is definitely the tax king in the field of AI computing power. Of course, Dolphin believes that the short-term delay in B200 shipments, a supply-side constraint, does not constitute an essential logical harm. However, there are indeed doubts now:

When the CAPEX increments of cloud service providers cannot rise wave after wave, and applications gradually shift from the training measurement where NVIDIA has absolute dominance to inference measurement with slightly more alternative solutions (such as ASIC chips), can NVIDIA continue to dominate the computing power market?

But there are also unfortunate companies:

The significant drop in ASML's order amount is partly due to the industry consolidation in the foundry sector, and on the other hand, it indicates that the new demand for AI cannot eliminate the sluggishness of traditional semiconductor scenarios.

Intel's situation is even more tragic, belonging to a direct collapse type of logic— Windows + X86 is shifting to Windows + ARM, which not only results in a loss of market share in the X86 market but also a loss of Intel's foundry business. The lengthening of the depreciation period for data centers essentially extends the CPU procurement cycle for Intel.

Moreover, GPU players are entering the CPU market with GPU + CPU complete solutions, and Intel is facing not only weakened downstream demand in the CPU market but also a gradual erosion of its remaining CPU market share.

In Intel's analysis early last year, Dolphin pointed out that the growth of its data center and AI business had stagnated, leading to a weakening of the company's market position. The subsequent Q2 financial report directly crashed, with a net loss of up to $1.61 billion, significantly shaking the company's fundamentals and causing the stock price to plummet.

However, it is meaningless to criticize Intel, which is on the verge of disintegration; instead, one should look at the re-evaluation value during the process of separating and selling each asset.

Annual Highlights Review:

《 NVIDIA: The strongest stock in the "universe," with continuous explosive packages》《 The Complete Collapse: Intel's "Pipe Dream"》

《 Apple "Lying Flat": Why Does It Enjoy a 30x PE?》

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