Chairman of Foxconn Young Liu delivers a speech through the Hon Hai Tech Day in Taipei on Oct. 18, 2023.
I-hwa Cheng | AFP | Getty Images
The boom in corporate investment into artificial intelligence infrastructure still has some method to go as large language models are continuing to evolve, based on the CEO of Foxconn, a key supplier to Apple.
Speaking with CNBC’s Emily Tan, Chief Executive and Chairman of Foxconn Young Liu, said that the AI boom “still has a while to go” as advanced language models from the likes of OpenAI have gotten increasingly intelligent with each recent iteration that comes out.
He said that the final movement within the tech industry today is trending toward a type of AI that’s as intelligent — if no more intelligent — than humans. This sort of AI is referred to within the industry as “AGI,” or Artificial General Intelligence.
“We … heard about AGI, and we’ll discuss different levels of intelligence. In the event you divide [intelligence] into 4 different levels, we’re at level two. There’s still level three and level 4 to go,” Liu told CNBC in an interview that aired Tuesday.
OpenAI is one in all the leading corporations pushing for AGI. Sam Altman, CEO of the Microsoft-backed startup, has previously said AGI will likely be developed within the “reasonably close-ish future,” nevertheless he’s also said he thinks it is going to “change jobs much lower than all of us think.”
The corporate, which released its upgraded GPT-4o model this summer, revealed last week that it had raised $6.6 billion at a $157 billion valuation. OpenAI continues to be working toward releasing its next-generation LLM, GPT-5, nevertheless it’s yet to share timing on when the brand new language model will launch.
Liu said that progress toward increasingly intelligent AI can only be an excellent thing for the AI server industry, which has been a key boon to Foxconn’s growth this yr.
“I feel for the AI server industry, I feel we still have a while to grow,” Liu added. “With the AGI capability growing, the age [of] AI devices will likely be one other industry we must always watch rigorously.”
Strong demand for Nvidia’s Blackwell chip
Foxconn, which trades as Hon Hai locally in China and Taiwan, is the world’s largest contract manufacturer for the electronics industry. The firm produces and assembles Apple products, including about two out of each three iPhones.
On Saturday, Foxconn said that it reported better-than-expected sales figures. The firm said its revenues got here in at 1.85 trillion Taiwanese dollars ($57.5 billion) within the September quarter, up 20.2% year-over-year. That “exceeded the corporate’s original expectations of great growth,” based on Foxconn.
The strong performance got here 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 corporate is currently on course to ship Nvidia’s next-generation Blackwell GPU (graphics processing unit), a sophisticated AI server chip, within the fourth quarter of 2024, Liu told CNBC. Blackwell can also be known under the brand name GB200.
Asked concerning the order book for Blackwell, Liu said that demand for the chip is “significantly better than we thought,” adding that the firm is constructing recent factories in Mexico to assist 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 Additional time” that demand for Blackwell was “insane.”
“Everybody desires to have probably the most and everybody desires to be first,” Huang said through the interview, which aired last Wednesday.
Blackwell, expected to cost between $30,000 and $40,000 per unit, is in hot demand from corporations like OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta and other firms constructing AI data centers to power products like ChatGPT and Copilot.
AI devices the subsequent growth opportunity
Beyond producing IT infrastructure for cloud-based AI applications like ChatGPT, Foxconn can also be powering the brand new iPhone 16, which comes with the newest generative AI features Apple hopes will breathe recent life into the smartphone industry.
Foxconn’s Liu said that “on-device” AI — where data is processed directly on a mobile device, fairly than a cloud or server — represents the subsequent substantial growth opportunity for the corporate.
“I feel the genAI-related device will likely be the subsequent method 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 subsequent phase, what we’re seeing will likely be the Gen AI devices,” he added. “We predict that will likely be the subsequent big method to boom … Now we have very high hopes on those devices.”
Still, it’s value noting though that Apple hasn’t yet released its AI system, called Apple Intelligence, on iPhone. The corporate is anticipated to release Apple Intelligence to the general public in a beta version later this fall as a part of a recent software update.
Smartphone sales have been gaining momentum this yr after several consecutive years of declines. Within the second quarter of 2024, smartphone shipments climbed 6.5% year-over-year to 285.4 million units, based on preliminary data from IDC — their fourth straight quarter of growth.
