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Depending on where you sit in the investment world, the venture capital business is either in rude health or facing something of an existential crisis.
根据你在投资界所处的位置，风投企业要么处于健康状态，要么面临生存危机。
Like many people in tech these days, start-up investors have backed artificial intelligence to the hilt. The latest evidence came with this week’s news that Databricks, a provider of software to gather and analyse large volumes of data, has raised another $10bn, one of the largest private investment rounds ever.
就像如今科技界的许多人一样，初创企业的投资者们对人工智能的支持也是不遗余力。最新的证据是，本周收集和分析大量数据的软件提供商Databricks再次融资100亿美元，这是有史以来最大的一轮私募投资。
Their willingness to put up the kind of large amounts that would once have required Wall Street involvement shows how some of the biggest venture investors are navigating the AI boom with a distinct swagger.
他们愿意拿出曾经需要华尔街参与的巨额资金，表明一些最大的风险投资者是如何在人工智能热潮中大显身手的。
But doubling down on AI has coincided with a period of severe indigestion for the world of start-up investing at large. The industry has barely begun to work its way through an immense overhang of investments from venture’s Zirp era — the period, ending in 2021, when a zero-interest rate policy brought a flood of capital into tech start-ups.
然而，就在市场加倍投注人工智能的同时，整个初创企业投资界却陷入了严重的消化不良期。该行业才刚刚开始解决风险投资在“零利率政策”时期留下的巨额投资过剩问题，这一时期在2021年结束，当时零利率政策推动大量资本投入技术初创企业。
This has left about $2.5tn trapped in private unicorns, or companies with a valuation of $1bn or more. At least, that’s the combined value these companies claimed after their last fundraisings, according to PitchBook. When it comes to actually trying to cash in these chips through initial public offerings or the M&A market, the returns are likely to be a lot less. How much of the venture business will be left standing after the eventual reckoning is hard to tell.
这使得约2.5万亿美元被困在私人独角兽公司（即估值10亿美元或以上的公司）中。根据PitchBook的数据，这至少是这些公司在上次融资后宣称的总价值。如果想通过首次公开募股或并购市场将这些筹码变现，回报可能少很多。在最终估算之后，风投企业还能剩下多少，现在还很难说。
First, consider the scale of the bet on AI. Databricks set out to raise $3bn-$4bn in its latest round, but chief executive Ali Ghodsi said that investors had offered $19bn (he decided to roughly split the difference).
首先，考虑一下对人工智能的押注规模。Databricks打算在最新一轮融资中筹集30亿至40亿美元，但首席执行官Ali Ghodsi说，投资者出价190亿美元（他决定大致平分差额）。
Given the overwhelming level of demand, Databricks’ latest valuation doesn’t look outlandish. At $52bn before the addition of the new cash, it was up from $43bn 15 months before and roughly equivalent to 17 times its annualised revenue run-rate — hardly outrageous for a business growing at 60 per cent a year.
鉴于压倒性的需求水平，Databricks的最新估值看起来并不离谱。在增加新融资之前，Databricks的估值为520亿美元，高于15个月前的430亿美元，大约相当于其年收入增长率的17倍。对于一家年增长率为60% 的企业来说，这并不算离谱。
Private financing rounds of $1bn or more were once a rarity. It took the huge ambition of SoftBank’s Vision Fund and a handful of specialist late-stage investment groups to break the mould. Now, investors like Thrive Capital, which led the Databricks round, pride themselves on putting up $1bn single-handed.
10亿美元或以上的私募融资一度非常罕见。软银愿景基金(Vision Fund)和一些专业的后期投资者的雄心壮志打破了这一格局。现在，像领投Databricks这一轮融资的Thrive Capital这样的投资者，都为自己能单枪匹马投入10亿美元而感到自豪。
Over the past two years, AI model builders OpenAI, Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI have raised nearly $40bn between them. Other sizeable investment rounds this week alone included $500mn for Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine, and $333mn for Vultr, part of a new band of companies running specialised cloud data centres to support AI.
在过去两年里，人工智能模型构建者OpenAI、Anthropic和埃隆•马斯克的xAI已共筹集了近400亿美元。仅在本周，其他几轮规模可观的投资包括：人工智能驱动搜索引擎Perplexity获得5亿美元投资；Vultr获得3.33亿美元投资，这是一家运营专门的云数据中心来支持人工智能的新公司。
What makes this boom in private backing for AI all the more remarkable is that it comes against the backdrop of a broader collapse in venture investing. Compared with the boom year of 2021, before the interest rate cycle turned, the amount of venture capital invested two years later had plummeted by 55 per cent, to $161bn, according to PitchBook. In the first nine months of this year, fewer than half as many investors completed deals as in all of 2021.
让人工智能私募投资热潮更加引人注目的是，它是在风险投资普遍崩溃的背景下出现的。根据PitchBook的数据，与2021年利率周期转折前的繁荣期相比，两年后的风险投资骤降55%，降至1610亿美元。今年前九个月，完成交易的投资者不到2021年全年的一半。
Fewer, bigger funds pumping ever-larger amounts into an increasingly narrow range of companies, almost all of them in AI: it’s a long way from the model on which venture was founded, of spreading small amounts of investment seed corn widely in the hopes that the occasional big hit would make up for many misses.
数量更少、规模更大的基金向范围越来越窄的公司注入越来越多的资金，而这些公司几乎都是人工智能领域的公司：这与风险投资创立之初的模式相去甚远，当时的模式是广泛少量投资，希望偶尔的大获成功能够弥补许多失误。
But VC’s concept of itself has changed. In many ways, private capital markets for tech now rival Wall Street. Rates of return will necessarily fall as much larger amounts of capital are put to work in more mature companies, though the successful investors will no doubt point out that they stand to make better returns than similar-sized funds investing in other asset classes.
但风投的概念已经发生了变化。在许多方面，科技领域的私募资本市场现在可以与华尔街相媲美。尽管成功的投资者无疑会指出，与投资其他资产类别的同规模基金相比，他们的回报率更高，但随着更多资金投入到更成熟的公司，回报率必然会下降。
For many other venture investors, the situation has become little short of critical. After a brief boom in 2021, IPOs and sales to strategic buyers have fallen off a cliff. With less cash being returned, many of the investors which back VC funds are unwilling to put up more. Many start-ups that achieved unicorn status during the boom would rather cut costs and conserve cash than return to raise more money at a lower valuation. It will take time for this to work through the system, but the reality — that many Zirp valuations are no longer supportable — will be unavoidable.
对于许多其他风险投资者来说，形势已经变得十分严峻。在经历了2021年的短暂繁荣之后，首次公开募股和向战略买家的销售都出现了断崖式下跌。由于回报降低，许多支持风险投资基金的投资者不愿投入更多资金。许多在经济繁荣时期获得独角兽地位的初创企业宁愿削减成本、节省现金，也不愿以较低的估值募集更多资金。这将需要时间才能通过系统来运作，但许多零利率政策下的估值已无法支撑的现实将不可避免。
Investors in the latest round of giant AI fundings will be hoping to escape a similar fate. Companies such as Databricks, which says it will turn cash flow positive this quarter, already look ready for an IPO. That could make 2025 a pivotal year for VC’s latest investment fad.
最新一轮人工智能巨头融资的投资者也希望能逃脱类似的命运。Databricks等公司表示本季度将实现正现金流，看起来已经为上市做好了准备。这可能会使2025年成为风险投资最新投资热潮的关键一年。