Venture Capitalist Mary Meeker Examines the Groundbreaking Speed of AI Development and Adoption

The roaring drumbeat of AI development and adoption is resonating loud and clear – its intensity unfamiliar and unparalleled compared to past technological revolutions including mobile, social, and cloud computing. The woman communicating this unique rhythm is seasoned venture capitalist Mary Meeker. While others might feel overwhelmed, Meeker has analysed and articulated the seismic shift AI has brought about, in a comprehensive 340-page report, punctuated heavily with the term ‘unprecedented’.

However, the financial returns failed to mirror the pace of development. Despite venture capitalists fueling the AI flame with vast sums of money, AI-based firms are still burning through cash. This discrepancy, Meeker suggests, is due to the hefty price-tag attached to training new AI models – possibly up to a staggering $1 billion.

At the same time, the landscape of competition is seeing companies keeping up with each other, delivering supplementary features at just a fraction of the cost, an element especially apparent among Chinese models. Meeker cites Nvidia’s 2024 Blackwell GPU as a prime example, which operates on 105,000x less energy per token than its 2014 ancestor, Kepler GPU.

In parallel, tech giants Google and Amazon are rapidly developing chips for their respective cloud platforms, embodying a clear shift in the market strategy. AI is not a side project; it is a foundational bet that many are making. As AI continues to pick up the pace, one thing is certain, the world as we know it is subject to an ‘unprecedented’ transformation.