Chairman of Foxconn Youthful Liu talks all through the Hon Hai Expertise Day in Taipei on Oct. 18, 2023.
I-hwa Cheng|AFP|Getty Pictures
The increase in enterprise monetary funding proper into skilled system framework nonetheless has some technique to go as enormous language designs are remaining to develop, in accordance with the chief govt officer of Foxconn, a vital vendor to Apple.
Speaking with CNBC’s Emily Tan, President and Chairman of Foxconn Youthful Liu, acknowledged that the AI increase “nonetheless has time to go” as progressive language designs from the similarity OpenAI are ending up being considerably good with every brand-new model that seems.
He acknowledged that the essential movement within the expertise sector immediately is trending in direction of a sort of AI that’s as good â $ ” Â in any other case much more good â $ ” Â than folks. This sort of AI is described within the sector as “AGI,” or Synthetic Common Information.
” We … examine AGI, and we’ll focus on numerous levels of information. In the event you break up [intelligence] proper into 4 numerous levels, we go to diploma 2. There’s nonetheless degree 3 and diploma 4 to go,” Liu knowledgeable CNBC in a gathering that broadcast Tuesday.
OpenAI is among the many main corporations selling AGI. Sam Altman, Chief Government Officer of the Microsoft-backed start-up, has truly previously acknowledged AGI will definitely be created within the “pretty close-ish future,” nonetheless he is moreover acknowledged he believes it should actually “alter duties rather a lot lower than all of us assume.”
The enterprise, which launched its up to date GPT-4o design this summertime, disclosed lately that it had truly elevated $6.6 billion at a $157 billion appraisal. OpenAI remains to be pursuing launching its next-generation LLM, GPT-5, nonetheless it is but to share timing on when the brand-new language design will definitely launch.
Liu acknowledged that growth in direction of considerably good AI can simply be a good suggestion for the AI net server sector, which has truly been a vital profit to Foxconn’s growth this yr.
” I assume for the AI net server sector, I assume we nonetheless have time to broaden,” Liu included. “With the AGI potential increasing, the age [of] AI devices will definitely be an extra sector we should view very fastidiously.”
Robust want for Nvidia’s Blackwell chip
Foxconn, which trades as Hon Hai in your space in China and Taiwan, is the globe’s greatest settlement maker for the digital units sector. The corporate creates and constructs Apple products, including about two out of every three iPhones.
On Saturday, Foxconn said that it reported better-than-expected sales figures. The firm said its revenues came in at 1.85 trillion Taiwanese dollars ($57.5 billion) in the September quarter, up 20.2% year-over-year. That “exceeded the company’s original expectations of significant growth,” according to Foxconn.
The strong performance came off the back of heightened demand for AI servers, which Foxconn manufactures for several major global tech giants, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia.
The company is currently on track to ship Nvidia’s next-generation Blackwell GPU (graphics processing unit), an advanced AI server chip, in the fourth quarter of 2024, Liu told CNBC. Blackwell is also known under the brand name GB200.
Asked about the order book for Blackwell, Liu said that demand for the chip is “much better than we thought,” adding that the firm is building new factories in Mexico to help service outsized demand for the product.
His comments tally with what Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said about demand for Blackwell previously. Last week, Huang told CNBC’s “Closing Bell Overtime” that demand for Blackwell was “insane.”
“Everybody wants to have the most and everybody wants to be first,” Huang said during the interview, which aired last Wednesday.
Blackwell, expected to cost between $30,000 and $40,000 per unit, is in hot demand from companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta and other firms building AI data centers to power products like ChatGPT and Copilot.
AI devices the next growth opportunity
Beyond producing IT infrastructure for cloud-based AI applications like ChatGPT, Foxconn is also powering the new iPhone 16, which comes with the latest generative AI features Apple hopes will breathe new life into the smartphone industry.
Foxconn’s Liu said that “on-device” AI â where data is processed directly on a mobile device, rather than a cloud or server â represents the next substantial growth opportunity for the company.
“I think the genAI-related device will be the next way to grow,” Liu told CNBC. “Currently, we’re seeing this on the cloud side. You see that genAI cloud equipment was very much booming.”
“But in the next phase, what we’re seeing will be the Gen AI devices,” he added. “We think that will be the next big way to boom … We have very high hopes on those devices.”
Still, it’s worth noting though that Apple hasn’t yet released its AI system, called Apple Intelligence, on iPhone. The company is expected to release Apple Intelligence to the public in a beta version later this fall as part of a new software update.
Smartphone sales have been gaining momentum this year after several consecutive years of declines. In the second quarter of 2024, smartphone shipments climbed 6.5% year-over-year to 285.4 million units, according to preliminary data from IDC â their fourth straight quarter of growth.
