International Courant
Foxconn Chairman Younger Liu delivers a speech throughout Hon Hai Tech Day in Taipei on October 18, 2023.
I-hwa Cheng | AFP | Getty Photos
The growth in enterprise funding in synthetic intelligence infrastructure nonetheless has an extended technique to go as main language fashions proceed to evolve, says the CEO of Foxconnan vital provider of Apple.
Talking to CNBC’s Emily Tan, Chief Govt and Chairman of Foxconn Younger Liu, Younger Liu stated the AI growth “nonetheless has a while to go” as superior language fashions from the likes of OpenAI turn into more and more clever with every new iteration launched .
He stated the overall motion within the expertise trade at present is towards a type of AI that’s as clever – if no more clever – than people. Any such AI is referred to within the trade as ‘AGI’ or Synthetic Common Intelligence.
“We… heard about AGI, and we’ll discuss totally different ranges of intelligence. For those who divide (intelligence) into 4 totally different ranges, we’re at stage two. There’s nonetheless stage three and stage 4 to go, Liu informed CNBC in an interview that aired Tuesday.
OpenAI is likely one of the main firms pushing for AGI. Sam Altman, CEO of the Microsoft-backed startup, has beforehand stated that AGI can be developed within the “pretty close to future,” however he additionally says he thinks it should “change far fewer jobs than all of us assume.”
The corporate, which launched its upgraded GPT-4o mannequin this summer time, introduced final week that it had raised $6.6 billion at a valuation of $157 billion. OpenAI continues to be engaged on releasing its subsequent technology LLM, GPT-5, however has but to share timing on when the brand new language mannequin can be launched.
Liu stated progress towards more and more clever AI can solely be good for the AI server trade, which has been a serious boon to Foxconn’s progress this yr.
“I believe we nonetheless have a while for the AI server trade to develop,” Liu added. “As AGI capabilities develop, the period of AI gadgets can be one other trade to maintain a detailed eye on.”
Sturdy demand for Nvidia’s Blackwell chip
Foxconn, which operates domestically underneath the title Hon Hai in China and Taiwan, is the world’s largest contract producer for the electronics trade. The corporate produces and assembles Apple merchandise, together with about two in three iPhones.
Foxconn stated Saturday it reported better-than-expected gross sales figures. The corporate stated gross sales within the September quarter have been 1.85 trillion Taiwan {dollars} ($57.5 billion), up 20.2% year-on-year. That “exceeded the corporate’s unique expectations of serious progress,” Foxconn stated.
The robust efficiency was pushed by elevated demand for AI servers, which Foxconn produces for a number of main international tech giants, together with Amazon, Googling, MicrosoftAnd Nvidia.
The corporate is presently on observe to ship Nvidia’s next-generation Blackwell GPU (graphics processing unit), a sophisticated AI server chip, within the fourth quarter of 2024, Liu informed CNBC. Blackwell can also be identified by the model title GB200.
Requested in regards to the order e-book for Blackwell, Liu stated demand for the chip is “significantly better than we thought,” including that the corporate is constructing new factories in Mexico to fulfill extreme demand for the product.
His feedback echo what Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has beforehand stated about Blackwell demand. Final week, Huang informed CNBC’s “Closing Bell Time beyond regulation” that the demand for Blackwell was “insane.”
“Everybody needs to have probably the most and everybody needs to be first,” Huang stated through the interview, which aired final Wednesday.
Blackwell, which is predicted to value between $30,000 and $40,000 per unit, is in excessive demand by firms comparable to OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta and different firms constructing AI knowledge facilities to energy merchandise like ChatGPT and Copilot.
AI gadgets are the subsequent progress alternative
Along with producing IT infrastructure for cloud-based AI purposes comparable to ChatGPT, Foxconn can also be powering the brand new iPhone 16, which comes with the newest generative AI options that Apple hopes will reinvigorate the smartphone trade.
Foxconn’s Liu stated on-device AI – the place knowledge is processed instantly on a cellular machine, moderately than on a cloud or server – represents the subsequent substantial progress alternative for the corporate.
“I believe the genAI-related machine would be the subsequent technique to develop,” Liu informed CNBC. “Proper now we’re seeing this on the cloud aspect. You may see that genAI cloud gear has been booming.”
“However within the subsequent section, we are going to see the Gen AI gadgets,” he added. “We predict this would be the subsequent massive factor for us to thrive… We have now very excessive expectations for these gadgets.”
Nonetheless, it is value noting that Apple hasn’t but launched its AI system, referred to as Apple Intelligence, on the iPhone. The corporate is predicted to launch Apple Intelligence to the general public in beta later this fall as a part of a brand new software program replace.
Smartphone gross sales have accelerated this yr after a number of consecutive years of declines. Within the second quarter of 2024, smartphone shipments rose 6.5% yr over yr to 285.4 million items, in response to preliminary knowledge from IDC – the fourth consecutive quarter of progress.
