#现象/趋势

The top 1% of AI spenders now outspend the bottom 50% combined They spend an average of $903/month, while the median customer spends just $25 More charts in our Top 100 Consumer AI Apps breakdown: https://www.a16z.news/p/top-100-consumer-ai-apps-seventh

AI-related employment is surging: AI-linked roles have accounted for more than +750,000 new jobs created in the US since 2023, according to LinkedIn estimates. This surge has been led by data annotators, with +282,000 new positions created, followed by data center jobs at +117,000, and AI engineers at +105,000. As a result, these 3 categories have accounted for +504,000 new jobs. AI-related positions also offer significantly higher pay, with a median salary of ~$180,000 on LinkedIn, compared to $80,000 across all jobs. This comes as the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure, particularly the buildout of data centers, is driving stronger demand for labor. The AI boom is reshaping the US job market.

BIS (Bank for International Settlements) just published a report on circular financing among AI companies. > Over half the money flowing into AI companies comes from other AI companies: between 2021 and 2025, peers supplied 55.2% of AI firms' incoming investment value, while AI investors sent 28.7% of their own deal value to AI targets. > Circular deals are rare but big: only 16.1% of AI-to-AI deals involved firms that also buy from or sell to each other, yet they held 46.4% of the money. That figure is partly inflated, because an entire funding round counts as circular if just 1 of its AI investors also trades with the company. > Chip, cloud and infrastructure suppliers are the investor in 73% of circular ties, and in 64% of all such ties the investor also sells to the firm it funds. Data tool and model makers rarely invest this way, since their products are more interchangeable. > AI is unusually suited to these deals: suppliers can track customers' compute use, chips and data centres are custom-built, few firms make critical tools such as photolithography machines, and capital needs are too big for normal lenders. In AI compute and cloud, 15.2% of supplier-customer ties also involve financing, versus just 3.3% with equity stakes in a broad 2006 US study. > Some AI sales are paid for by the sellers themselves, because money a supplier invests in a customer partly returns as the supplier's revenue. Lucent and Nortel did this in the late 1990s, then lost money on the loans and lost the sales when the telecom firms they funded stalled. > A supplier that invests in its customer can lose twice: if the customer struggles, both the stake and the future orders shrink. Because these deals involve a few giant suppliers, 1 shock could spread through sales and finance at the same time. > Much of this risk is hidden: many AI firms are private, deals mix cash with long-term purchase promises, and pledges to cover any fall in the value of chips and data centre equipment stay off the books until a downturn forces payment. Because these firms span many sectors and countries, no single regulator sees the full picture, and the research names no companies or overall dollar total.

BIS (Bank for International Settlements) just published a report on circular financing among AI companies. > Over half the money flowing into AI companies comes from other AI companies: between 2021 and 2025, peers supplied 55.2% of AI firms' incoming investment value, while AI investors sent 28.7% of their own deal value to AI targets. > Circular deals are rare but big: only 16.1% of AI-to-AI deals involved firms that also buy from or sell to each other, yet they held 46.4% of the money. That figure is partly inflated, because an entire funding round counts as circular if just 1 of its AI investors also trades with the company. > Chip, cloud and infrastructure suppliers are the investor in 73% of circular ties, and in 64% of all such ties the investor also sells to the firm it funds. Data tool and model makers rarely invest this way, since their products are more interchangeable. > AI is unusually suited to these deals: suppliers can track customers' compute use, chips and data centres are custom-built, few firms make critical tools such as photolithography machines, and capital needs are too big for normal lenders. In AI compute and cloud, 15.2% of supplier-customer ties also involve financing, versus just 3.3% with equity stakes in a broad 2006 US study. > Some AI sales are paid for by the sellers themselves, because money a supplier invests in a customer partly returns as the supplier's revenue. Lucent and Nortel did this in the late 1990s, then lost money on the loans and lost the sales when the telecom firms they funded stalled. > A supplier that invests in its customer can lose twice: if the customer struggles, both the stake and the future orders shrink. Because these deals involve a few giant suppliers, 1 shock could spread through sales and finance at the same time. > Much of this risk is hidden: many AI firms are private, deals mix cash with long-term purchase promises, and pledges to cover any fall in the value of chips and data centre equipment stay off the books until a downturn forces payment. Because these firms span many sectors and countries, no single regulator sees the full picture, and the research names no companies or overall dollar total.

@minchoi Colossus 1 is 150k H100, 50k H200 and 30k GB200. Colossus 2 is 110k GB200 and 440k GB300. Another 220k GB300 will be fully operational next week and another 220k in November. If we get lucky, yet another 220k GB300 by late December.

Introducing our State of Markets pt 2, along with a companion podcast where we unpack the data and discuss what comes next. Tech is the everything cycle. Supply: putting the buildout in context, just passed railroads as % of GDP. The wisdom of Elon is real: the factory (or the datacenter!) is the product. Demand: diffusion is so, so early. Median AI vendor spending in the top 1% of companies is 8x that of the top 10%. Only about 30% of S&P 500 companies report a quantified AI impact, which means there’s a substantial opportunity in connecting models to a company's data and workflows. Diffusion into companies is one of the main themes of the next 5 years. We’re entering the agent work period. Only a few million users today, but applicable to billions of internet users with massive surplus created. META/GOOG monetize US users at $200+ per year today. Agent opportunity is much higher. Mega-trends the next 5 years: Consumer agents, Robotics, Autonomy, AI x bio, Personal health, Diffusion into enterprise, New era of American Dynamism. Much more in our SoM report here - https://www.a16z.news/p/state-of-markets-ii @a16z @sarahdingwang @aleximm @santiago__rdz