尊敬的用户您好，这是来自FT中文网的温馨提示：如您对更多FT中文网的内容感兴趣，请在苹果应用商店或谷歌应用市场搜索“FT中文网”，下载FT中文网的官方应用。
There is one notable corner of the tech world that has not been touched by the artificial intelligence euphoria sweeping through the stock market.
科技界有一个值得注意的角落，尚未被席卷股市的人工智能热潮所触及。
If generative AI really does represent the next great sales opportunity for the tech industry, then software companies ought to be among the biggest winners. After all, most AI is likely to show up as enhanced features in the business software that companies rely on in their daily operations.
如果生成式人工智能真的代表了科技行业下一个巨大的销售机会，那么软件公司应该是最大的赢家之一。毕竟，大多数人工智能都可能以增强功能的形式出现在企业日常运营所依赖的商业软件中。
However, the BVP Nasdaq index of cloud software companies is down nearly 10 per cent this year, while the Nasdaq Composite is up more than 20 per cent. It has also halved from its pandemic-era peak. The slump points to an industry at a crossroads. A long, secular growth phase driven by the rise of the cloud looks like it is entering a new and more mature state, while the next (the spread of generative AI in business) has barely begun.
然而，BVP纳斯达克(Nasdaq)云软件公司指数今年下跌近10%，而纳斯达克综合指数上涨超过20%。它也从疫情时期的峰值下降了一半。这种下滑表明该行业正处于十字路口。由云计算崛起驱动的长期增长阶段似乎正在进入一个新的、更成熟的状态，而下一个（商业中生成式人工智能的传播）几乎刚刚开始。
At times like this, Wall Street faces complex questions. If the cloud business really is maturing, the focus of investors needs to shift more quickly from growth to value. Tech companies that recently reported disappointing results, such as Salesforce, MongoDB and Workday, have tried to pass the lull off as the result of extended economic weakness. But the longer it goes on, the harder this argument is to sustain. Salesforce’s revenues doubled in the past four years to $36bn: at that scale, the slower 10 per cent growth it has projected for next year begins to look more like the norm.
在这种时候，华尔街面临着复杂的问题。如果云业务真的成熟了，投资者的关注重点就需要更快地从增长转向价值。最近发布令人失望的业绩的科技公司，如Salesforce、MongoDB和Workday，试图将低迷归咎于经济疲软的延续。但是，随着时间的推移，这个论点越来越难以维持。Salesforce的收入在过去四年翻了一番，达到了360亿美元：在这个规模下，预计明年增长10%的速度开始看起来更像是正常水平。
At the same time, investors have to handicap which companies will catch the next wave of growth and which will fail to adapt and be left in the dust.
同时，投资者必须评估哪些公司将抓住下一波增长机遇，哪些公司将无法适应并被抛在后头。
According to the companies themselves, the lack of an impact on their sales from AI is just a timing issue. Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff, for instance, points to the challenge of training large armies of salespeople to handle what he calls “a harder, more complex sell”. Customers are grappling with a wide set of questions, seeking to understand how the new AI models work and how their workers should interact with them. They also need to consider how to redesign their work processes to make best use of the technology, as well as deal with new threats to the security of their data.
根据这些公司自己的说法，人工智能对他们的销售没有产生影响只是一个时间问题。例如，Salesforce首席执行官马克•贝尼奥夫(Marc Benioff)指出，培训大批销售人员来处理他所称的“更加困难、更加复杂的销售”是一个挑战。客户们正在努力解决一系列问题，试图理解新的人工智能模型如何工作以及他们的员工应该如何与之互动。他们还需要考虑如何重新设计工作流程以充分利用这项技术，并应对对数据安全的新威胁。
Even if sales are still negligible, the software companies report huge interest from customers in piloting their new AI services. This may mean the AI dividend has just been delayed.
即使销售额仍然微不足道，软件公司报告称客户对试点其新的人工智能服务表现出了巨大的兴趣。这可能意味着人工智能红利只是被推迟了。
Yet the disruptive threats from AI suggest things will not be so straightforward. One is the upheaval to the cloud companies’ business model. Most rely on charging per-seat subscriptions, meaning their revenue goes up in line with the number of workers using their services. If generative AI works as promised and makes workers far more productive, customers should be able to do more with fewer staff.
然而，人工智能带来的颠覆性威胁表明事情不会那么简单。其中一个是对云计算公司商业模式的颠覆。大多数公司依赖按用户订阅收费，这意味着他们的收入与使用他们服务的员工数量成正比。如果生成式人工智能如所承诺的那样提高工人的生产力，客户应该能够用更少的员工做更多的事情。
The result has been a pivot towards consumption-based pricing, or charging based on how much the new services are actually used. Tying fees to usage has the added advantage of offsetting some of the higher cost of delivering generative AI. But unless this leads to real and demonstrable business benefits, the software companies could face a backlash when customers see their bills soar.
结果是转向基于消费的定价，即根据新服务的实际使用情况收费。将费用与使用量挂钩的额外优势是抵消了提供生成式人工智能的更高成本。但是，除非这导致了真实可证明的商业利益，否则软件公司可能会面临客户看到账单飙升时的强烈反对。
The software groups also have tech history to contend with. In the past, new tech eras — such as the rise of client-server computing in the 1990s and cloud computing the following decade — have brought new waves of start-up software companies to the fore. New companies, their products and business models designed from the ground up to fit a new computing paradigm start with a big advantage.
软件团队还需要应对技术历史。过去，新的技术时代，比如上世纪90年代的客户端-服务器计算和接下来的云计算，都带来了新一波的初创软件公司。新公司、他们的产品和商业模式从头开始设计，以适应新的计算范式，从一开始就具有巨大的优势。
The first wave of these “AI native” software companies has often looked like little more than “wrappers” around the large language models, adding only a veneer of industry-specific expertise as they offer businesses ways to adopt generative AI. But they are all working hard to gain a foothold from where they can start to build out more compelling services.
这些“AI原生”软件公司的第一波往往看起来只是大型语言模型的“包装”，只是在提供企业采用生成式人工智能的方式时添加了一层行业特定的专业知识的外观。但他们都在努力争取一个立足点，从那里开始构建更具吸引力的服务。
According to Salesforce’s Benioff, the incumbents will be hard to unseat. Companies such as his have become the repositories of their customers’ most important data, he says, giving them a big advantage when it comes to training the AI models that businesses will find truly useful.
根据Salesforce的贝尼奥夫所说，现有的公司将很难被取代。他说，像Salesforce这样的公司已经成为客户最重要数据的存储库，这使得他们在培训企业真正有用的AI模型时具有很大优势。
That will only count if today’s cloud companies can adapt their own products and processes to the new technology fast enough. For now, Wall Street is suspending judgment.
但前提是，今天的云计算公司必须尽快让自己的产品和流程适应新技术。目前，华尔街暂不做出判断。