马克·扎克伯格曾准备在人工智能领域豪赌高达2000亿美元，而Meta的财务主管则希望负责开发这项技术的人能够理解失败意味着什么。在周一发布的Cheeky Pint播客节目中，Meta首席执行官亚历山大·王（Meta首席人工智能官）回顾了去年年底关于巨额投资的讨论，当时Meta的新模型尚未证明自己。“去年年底，我们当时心想，好吧，我们对进展相当兴奋，但还尚未看到模型的实际表现，”扎克伯格对节目主持人约翰·科利森说道。
Mark Zuckerberg was ready to bet as much as $200 billion on AI, and Meta’s finance chief wanted the person building it to understand what failure would mean. On the Cheeky Pint podcast released on Monday, Meta CEO and Alexandr Wang, Meta's chief AI officer, recounted conversations from late last year about enormous investments before Meta’s new models had proven themselves. “At the end of last year, we're like, all right, we are quite excited about the progress. We haven't seen the models yet,” Zuckerberg told show host John Collison.
“我当时就说，你知道的，我们准备开一张支票，金额大概是……我不知道，1000亿到2000亿美元。我就像问：‘亚历克斯，你确定这能成功吗？’”扎克伯格在谈到王时说道。扎克伯格并未具体说明当时计划投入的时间范围或确切规模。王表示，当时他已经收到了鼓舞人心的研究进展，但成功仍远非板上钉钉。在夏威夷的一次高管会议上，王称，首席财务官苏珊·李多次将他叫到一旁。
“I'm going to, like, you know, we're going to write this check for, like, I don't know, like $100 billion, $200 billion. I'm like, 'Alex, are you sure this is going to work?'”Zuckerberg said of Wang. Zuckerberg did not specify the timeframe or exact scope of that contemplated commitment. Wang said he had encouraging research updates at that point, but success was far from certain. At an executive gathering in Hawaii, Wang said that CFO Susan Li repeatedly pulled him aside.
“苏珊多次把我叫到一边，对我说：‘你知道吗，我只是想告诉你，如果这个项目不成功，那后果真的会非常、非常严重。从财务角度来看，情况会极其糟糕。’”王在谈到李时说道。过去几个季度，Meta的资本支出规模巨大，引发了投资者的关注。Meta最新的指引显示，2026年的资本支出（包括融资租赁本金支付）将在1300亿至1450亿美元之间。
“Susan pulled me aside many times and was like, 'You know, I just want to tell you, if this doesn't work, like, you know, this is going to be really, really bad. It's going to be very, very bad in financial terms.'”Wang said of Li. Meta's capex over the past few quarters has been substantial, raising eyebrows among investors. Meta’s latest guidance puts 2026 capital expenditures, including finance lease principal payments, at $130 billion to $145 billion.
根据Business Insider此前看到的预测，Cantor Fitzgerald的分析师预计，到2027年，这一支出将达到2000亿美元。投资者对此已表现出担忧。尽管4月份的财报结果强劲，但在公司将其年度支出预测上调至1250亿至1450亿美元后，Meta的股价在盘后交易中仍下跌了超过6%。在Meta内部，管理层对这场豪赌的风险心知肚明。
In forecasts previously seen by Business Insider, Cantor Fitzgerald analysts expect the spending to reach $200 billion in 2027. Investors have shown limits. Meta shares fell more than 6% in after-hours trading following April’s earnings report, despite strong results, after the company raised its annual spending forecast to $125 billion to $145 billion. Inside Meta, the leadership is well aware of the stakes.
用王的话来说，“这他妈的风险太大了。”扎克伯格说：“所以我认为，要想这件事失败，仅仅我们失败还不够，整个AI领域都必须失败。而且就算那样发生了，我们仍然有所有这些其他用途，可以高效地利用计算能力。”
In Wang's words, "this is a fuck ton of risk.”"So I think that in order for it not to work out, it's not just that we have to fail, AI overall has to fail," Zuckerberg said. "And then even if that happens, we still have all these other uses to productively use compute."