AI循环融资机制解析：并非庞氏骗局
Is Circular AI Financing Really as Bad as It Sounds?
Circular financing is a term thrown around in articles for and against AI because intuitively it seems like a simple concept. We've all seen Bloomberg's graph with the arrows going back and forth and thought that money is just being recycled between companies while their valuations skyrocketed. That's a scam, right? But for all of the use of the term, the actual mechanics of so-called circular financing are often not explained.
循环融资是支持和反对人工智能的文章中经常提及的一个术语，因为直观上它似乎是一个简单的概念。我们都见过彭博社的图表，箭头来回穿梭，并认为资金只是在公司之间循环，而它们的估值却飙升了。那是个骗局，对吧？但尽管这个术语被广泛使用，所谓的循环融资的实际机制却往往没有得到解释。
Why do companies do it? And if it's so blatantly wrong, how are they getting away with it? So, we're going to answer those questions. Now, at its core, this video is about accounting. But stick with us because by the end of this video, you'll understand the most widely discussed but little understood financial instrument of the moment. The future war between humans and AI might have already started and it's causing big tech companies to rethink everything.
公司为什么要这样做？如果这明显是错误的，他们又是如何逃脱惩罚的？所以，我们将回答这些问题。现在，从核心上讲，这个视频是关于会计的。但请继续关注我们，因为到视频结束时，你将理解当前最广泛讨论但鲜为人知的金融工具。人类与人工智能之间的未来战争可能已经开始，这正促使大型科技公司重新思考一切。
In our new magazine, Too Long, we explain how blocking new data centers might finally burst the AI bubble. That's just one of the articles in our longest issue ever. Subscribe to get your copy by clicking the link in the description. Circular financing is not a single precise accounting term. It's a qualitative description used by the media to explain how money moves between different companies. In fact, before AI came along, people didn't really talk about circular financing as a defined phenomenon.
在我们的新杂志《太长》中，我们解释了阻止新建数据中心如何可能最终戳破人工智能泡沫。这只是我们最长一期中的一篇文章。订阅以获取你的副本，请点击描述中的链接。循环融资并不是一个精确的会计术语。它是媒体用来解释资金如何在公司之间流动的一种定性描述。事实上，在人工智能出现之前，人们并不真正将循环融资作为一个定义明确的现象来讨论。
There's a reason for that. As per the FT's Lex column, these transactions are not actually circular, which would suggest that no value is actually created, but backto back. Equity investments aren't necessarily funneled directly back into buying chips. And even when they do result in a chip sale, nothing is given free. Nvidia gets the revenue and still has a stake in the company. So AI companies aren't swapping money back and forth on paper to inflate their valuations.
这是有原因的。根据《金融时报》的Lex专栏，这些交易实际上并不是循环的，那将意味着没有创造任何实际价值，而是背对背的。股权投资不一定直接回流到购买芯片上。即使它们确实导致了芯片销售，也没有任何东西是免费赠送的。英伟达获得了收入，并且仍然持有该公司的股份。所以，人工智能公司并不是在纸上交换资金来夸大它们的估值。
That's called roundtpping, and it's illegal. Enron did it in the '90s, and it led to a swave of criminal convictions. We might refer to what AI companies do by the existing term for these sorts of deals, vendor financing, which describes a number of different ways that a company might finance their own customers. On the simpler end of vendor financing, we have higher purchase agreements, where I sell you a car, let's say, and you pay me back in installments.
那被称为“往返交易”，是非法的。安然公司在90年代就这么做过，导致了一系列刑事定罪。我们可能会用现有的术语“供应商融资”来指代人工智能公司所做的这类交易，这描述了公司可能为其客户提供融资的多种不同方式。在供应商融资的简单一端，我们有分期付款购买协议，比如我卖给你一辆车，你分期付款给我。
Technically, I've given you the car along with a loan to buy it with. But it can also get a little bit more complicated and interesting. Instead of a company and an individual, imagine two companies that want to make a deal. In this case, imagine a big pharmaceutical company and a small research lab. Big farmer might take an equity stake in the small lab. They have skin in the game now and will reap the rewards of that firm's profits and any increase in its valuation.
从技术上讲，我给了你这辆车，并附带一笔贷款来购买它。但这也可以变得更加复杂和有趣。想象一下，不是一家公司和一个人，而是两家公司想要达成交易。在这种情况下，想象一家大型制药公司和一个小型研究实验室。大型制药公司可能会在小实验室中持有股权。他们现在有了切身利益，并将从该公司的利润及其估值增长中获益。
In exchange, the lab promises to go to the big pharmaceutical company when they have a new drug to manufacture. And so, Big Farmer gets more business. The fate of these two companies ar
作为交换，实验室承诺当他们有新的药物要生产时，会去找这家大型制药公司。因此，大型制药公司获得了更多业务。这两家公司的命运紧密相连。
更进一步：量化金融体系
看懂新闻只是起点——沿量化金融路径，把它变成能交付的工程能力