Just now, the "Queen of the Internet" released the first "AI Trend Report," spanning 340 pages, attracting industry attention

Mary Meeker, known as the "Queen of the Internet," is making a comeback, this time targeting the AI giant OpenAI.

Meeker is the founder and general partner of the venture capital firm Bond and was dubbed the "Queen of the Internet" for her previous annual Internet trends reports. Before founding Bond, she was responsible for growth business at Kleiner Perkins from 2010 to 2019, investing in companies such as Facebook, Spotify, Ring, and Block (then known as Square).

In her extensive 340-page report titled "Trends – Artificial Intelligence (AI)," this legendary analyst, who accurately predicted the rise of Google and Apple, clearly states that the growth rate of artificial intelligence surpasses any technological wave in history.

The report continues Meeker's consistent grand vision, covering everything from the invention of the printing press to the application of Roomba vacuum robots, attempting to paint a panoramic picture of the AI era. The report points out that the speed of AI development is unprecedented, with explosive growth in user numbers, usage, and capital expenditure, profoundly changing the global Internet landscape and ways of working.

The Transformation Speed of AI is "Unprecedented"

Meeker uses the term "unprecedented" 51 times in the report to describe the speed of AI development, adoption, investment, and usage.

For example, ChatGPT reached 800 million users in just 17 months, a growth rate that surpasses any technology in human history.

ChatGPT is also eating into search market share, with its annual search volume reaching 365 billion times, which is 5.5 times that of Google. However, this unprecedented speed of adoption also means that the level of competition is equally unprecedented.

Technological Advantages Will Translate into Global Dominance

Most notably, Meeker's judgment on the geopolitical impact of AI is striking.

She bluntly states that "AI leadership may determine geopolitical dominance," suggesting that technological competition has risen to the level of national strategy. For investors, this means that AI-related investments must not only consider commercial returns but also assess the potential impact of geopolitical risks on asset allocation

Indian Users Support OpenAI's Valuation Myth

According to the report, India has become the largest source of monthly active users for ChatGPT, even surpassing the usage in the United States.

This means that OpenAI's valuation, which reaches hundreds of billions of dollars, is largely thanks to the contributions of Indian users.

This finding is quite ironic—an AI giant headquartered in San Francisco, built on Silicon Valley venture capital, has its user growth engine coming from an emerging market across the ocean. More critically, Indian users are far more price-sensitive than American users, providing an excellent breakthrough opportunity for low-cost competitors.

The Harsh Reality Behind Cost Plummeting

The report reveals that while the cost of training top AI models has skyrocketed by 2,400 times over the past eight years, the cost of AI inference has plummeted by 99.7% in just two years.

This scissors effect is reshaping the rules of the game across the entire industry.

As hardware costs rapidly decline—NVIDIA's 2024 Blackwell GPU has a single token energy consumption that is 105,000 times lower than that of the 2014 Kepler GPU—lightweight models focused on customized scenarios are beginning to show a lethal competitive advantage. They do not require the massive investments that OpenAI does, yet can provide "good enough" services in specific scenarios.

The combination of these factors has led to a rapid decline in the costs of top AI products since their inception. This is good news for consumers, but it also means that companies hoping to fully leverage technology for commercial gain will need to have stronger financial backing.

Rise of Chinese AI Companies, Cash-Burning Models Face Survival Crisis

Data shows that the expected annual total revenue of the three top American AI companies—OpenAI, xAI, and Anthropic—has reached $12 billion, but they have collectively raised $95 billion in funding.

Mikkel bluntly pointed out that OpenAI's valuation looks "expensive" compared to its revenue.

The report noted that these "aristocratic" AI companies are facing not only cost pressures but also fundamental challenges to their business models with the rapid rise of Chinese models and open-source alternatives.

For investors, Mikkel's advice is to "only invest what you are willing to lose." She stated:

"Putting all your eggs in one basket is very risky because everything is rising now, and it seems to be going well—until one day the situation suddenly reverses."