令牌是機器智能的新貨幣

在當今人工智能的景觀中，令牌已成為機器智能的基本單位。

Two quick announcements before I jump into today’s post!

在我進入今天的帖子之前，有兩個快速公告！

One, I will be chatting with Kevin Kelly in my live show tomorrow at 12pm ET / 9am PT on the Substack app. Two, I am speaking at SXSW next week. If you’re there, join me for an Exponential View meet-up.

第一，我將在明天的現場表演中與凱文·凱利（Kevin Kelly）聊天。第二，我下週在SXSW上講話。如果您在那裡，請加入我的指數觀看聚會。

OK, now onto our regular programming.

好的，現在進入我們的常規編程。

In today’s landscape of artificial intelligence, the token has emerged as the fundamental unit of machine intelligence. Tokens are the building blocks of AI communication—the bite-sized pieces through which humans and machines exchange information. When you type “What is the weather today?”, an AI system breaks this into individual tokens like “What”, “is”, “the”, “weather”, etc., processes them, and then generates new tokens that form its response. Tokens transform your question into something the AI can understand, and the tokens it produces in return represent the machine’s carefully constructed answer.

在當今人工智能的景觀中，令牌已成為機器智能的基本單位。令牌是AI通信的基礎，這是人類和機器交換信息的咬合大小的作品。當您鍵入“今天的天氣是什麼？”時，AI系統將其分解為“什麼”，“ IS”，“”，“天氣”等單個令牌，然後對其進行處理，然後生成形成其響應的新令牌。代幣將您的問題轉換為AI可以理解的東西，其產生的令牌代表了機器精心構造的答案。

Understanding the scale of the token market is incredibly valuable, as this insight provides a clear, intuitive grasp of the market size of the genAI economy.

了解代幣市場的規模非常有價值，因為這種見解提供了對Genai經濟市場規模的清晰，直觀的掌握。

It helps estimate the infrastructure necessary to sustain growth, particularly in terms of computing resources like GPUs and other specialized chips. While the initial demand for AI training capabilities fuelled Nvidia’s historic market capitalization surge past $3 trillion in 2024, sustained token usage for inference — representing demand for genAI — will be crucial to maintaining this valuation.

它有助於估計維持增長所需的基礎設施，特別是在計算GPU和其他專業芯片等計算資源方面。儘管對AI培訓能力的最初需求促進了NVIDIA在2024年3萬億美元的歷史性市值增長，但推斷的持續代幣使用（代表對Genai的需求）對於維持這一估值至關重要。

But accurately assessing this market, especially in the US, can be challenging. Major technology firms typically remain guarded and reveal only limited information about their actual usage. So analysts often rely on reported revenue figures, which, while helpful, give only partial visibility into true market dynamics.

但是準確評估這個市場，尤其是在美國，可能具有挑戰性。主要的技術公司通常會保持警惕，並僅透露有關其實際用途的有限信息。因此，分析師經常依靠報告的收入數據，儘管有幫助，但只能在真正的市場動態中提供部分知名度。

Now valuable insights have begun to emerge from the Chinese market. Recently disclosed data points from China — like the DeepSeek numbers we referenced in the Monday email — offer a rare glimpse into actual usage patterns. This can help us construct a more comprehensive picture of the global token economy.

現在，有價值的見解已經開始從中國市場出現。最近披露了來自中國的數據點（例如我們在星期一電子郵件中引用的DeepSeek數字），罕見地了解了實際使用模式。這可以幫助我們構建對全球代幣經濟的更全面的了解。

Software markets commonly exhibit a distinct pattern of concentration: a small number of companies or products tend to massively dominate a given segment or geographic market. Because this dominance is so pronounced, even limited data about the largest players can serve to illuminate the overall structure and size of the market.

軟件市場通常表現出獨特的集中度：少數公司或產品往往會大大統治給定的細分市場或地理市場。由於這種主導地位是如此明顯，因此即使是關於最大玩家的數據有限的數據也可以闡明市場的整體結構和規模。

Helpfully, this power law dynamic considerably simplifies market analysis. Even a few data points, like those emerging from China, can provide surprising insights into the global AI token economy.

有益的是，這種權力法動態大大簡化了市場分析。即使是從中國出現的數據點，也可以為全球AI代幣經濟提供令人驚訝的見解。

This approach, of course, has notable limitations: it isn’t bottom-up and it captures only a snapshot in time—specifically, the token market from late 2024 to early 2025. However, it helps us understand the scale of the numbers involved and the implications for infrastructure and investment.

當然，這種方法具有明顯的局限性：它不是自下而上的，它僅捕獲了時間的快照 - 特別是，從2024年底到2025年初的代幣市場。但是，它有助於我們了解涉及數量的規模以及對基礎架構和投資的影響。

Over to China

到中國

Looking at this particular report, Baidu’s Wenxiaoyan service was delivering 1 trillion tokens per day in August 2024, with API calls having increased 30-fold over one year. Bytedance’s Doubao went over 4 trillion tokens per day following several price cuts, with token usage growing 33 times in a single year.

查看這份特定的報告，百度的Wenxiaoyan服務在2024年8月每天提供1萬億個令牌，API電話在一年內增加了30倍。幾次降價後，Bytedance的Doubao每天超過4萬億個令牌，一年中的代幣使用量增長了33次。

The report also hinted that there were 200 Chinese firms delivering at least 1 billion tokens per day. We know that Doubao sits at 4 trillion per day, while the 200th-ranked firm delivers around a billion tokens per day. DeepSeek recently announced they served 750 billion tokens daily to a diverse range of customers, both domestically and internationally.

該報告還暗示，每天有200家中國公司至少提供10億個令牌。我們知道，Doubao每天以4萬億美元的價格坐著，而排名第200的公司每天提供約10億個令牌。 DeepSeek最近宣布，他們每天在國內和國際上為各種客戶提供7500億個令牌。

Using these three data points, we can begin to estimate the market’s overall size. I used a modified Zipf distribution, a discrete probability distribution that follows a power law where the frequency of an element is inversely proportional to its rank. In market analysis, Zipf’s law often manifests when the market share of the nth largest company is approximately proportional to 1/n. I’ve adapted this distribution to account for the specific characteristics of the token market, allowing us to estimate the entire market from limited data points about the largest players.

使用這三個數據點，我們可以開始估計市場的整體規模。我使用了修改後的ZIPF分佈，這是一個遵循功率定律的離散概率分佈，其中元素的頻率與其等級成反比。在市場分析中，ZIPF定律經常表現出第n個最大公司的市場份額大約成正比1/n。我已經調整了此分配以說明令牌市場的特定特徵，從而使我們能夠從有關最大參與者的有限數據點估算整個市場。

The chart above provides five different distributions of token usage by the largest Chinese genAI firms, ranging from the most concentrated market (orange 🟠) to the least (green 🟢). Each resembles common distribution curves observed in other markets: orange like web search, blue like enterprise software, red like cloud computing and yellow and green like non-technology markets.

上圖提供了最大的中國Genai公司的五個不同分佈，從最集中的市場（橙色）到最少（綠色）。每一個都類似於在其他市場中觀察到的常見分佈曲線：橙色搜索，藍色企業軟件，紅色像雲計算以及黃色和綠色（如非技術市場）。

Summing across all samples allows us to estimate the market’s total size and make educated guesses about market concentration.

總結所有樣本使我們能夠估算市場的總規模，並就市場集中度提出良好的猜測。

My best guess is that the Chinese genAI market today might resemble something between the orange and blue curves, with Doubao, Wenxiaoyan and DeepSeek being the largest players. The market might be less concentrated publicly, though probably not significantly below the blue curve.

我最好的猜測是，當今中國的Genai市場可能類似於橙色曲線和藍色曲線之間的某些東西，而Doubao，Wenxiaoyan和Deepseek是最大的球員。市場可能不集中，儘管可能不高於藍色曲線。

I’ve also built a preview calculator that lets you play around with some of the parameters here. This simplified version isn’

我還構建了一個預覽計算器，可讓您在這裡使用一些參數。這個簡化的版本是