Investors' perspectives on the artificial intelligence (AI) market are rapidly changing. Just two to three years ago, AI often referred to generative AI services like ChatGPT or software innovations. However, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang recently began describing AI not merely as a technology, but as a massive industrial ecosystem and an industrial revolution.

The core concept he introduced is the 'AI Five-Layer Cake.' Through the official NVIDIA blog and a World Economic Forum (WEF) panel in Davos, Jensen Huang explained the AI industry as a structure consisting of five layers. He emphasized that "AI is not just one model, but a full stack," highlighting that AI is a massive industrial structure connecting power, factories, semiconductors, data centers, communication networks, and even robots.

The AI Five-Layer Cake consists of Energy, Chips, Infrastructure, Models, and Applications, in that order. Recently, global investors have been looking closely not at the top layer, but at the bottom layer.

1st Floor: Energy - The New Bottleneck of AI The bottom layer of the five-layer cake is energy. While many investors see GPUs as the core of the AI industry, Jensen Huang points to electric power as the most crucial element. AI data centers consume vast amounts of electricity that are incomparable to traditional internet servers. For large language models (LLMs) to process billions of requests in real-time, hundreds of thousands of GPUs must operate simultaneously, which requires a stable power supply above all else. Jensen Huang recently pointed out that the next bottleneck in the AI industry could be electric power, rather than semiconductors.

Amid this trend, nuclear power companies, transformer manufacturers, and power transmission and distribution infrastructure companies are gaining attention as new AI beneficiary stocks in global financial markets. The inflow of funds into nuclear power-related stocks and power infrastructure stocks in the domestic stock market (KOSPI), including Doosan Enerbility, is also driven by this macroscopic trend.

2nd Floor: Chips - The AI Semiconductor Ecosystem Currently playing the role of the heart of the AI industry are GPUs, with NVIDIA effectively dominating the global AI GPU market. However, the 'chips' Jensen Huang refers to are not limited to GPUs. It encompasses the entire semiconductor ecosystem necessary for AI computing, including HBM (High Bandwidth Memory), advanced packaging, network chips, and AI accelerators. For this reason, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are evaluated as key beneficiary companies in the global AI investment cycle, and the importance of HBM is growing to the point where it is referred to as the 'oil' of the AI era.

3rd Floor: Infrastructure - The Race to Secure Data Centers From the infrastructure stage onward, the market size grows even larger. As AI advances, the amount of data movement increases exponentially, expanding the importance of data centers, networks, and optical communication infrastructure needed to process it. The AI industry has evolved beyond simple semiconductor competition into a race to build massive infrastructure that swiftly moves and stores data. This is why global Big Tech companies are currently engaging in an AI data center investment race worth hundreds of trillions of won.

4th & 5th Floors: Models and Applications The fourth layer consists of models, and the fifth layer consists of applications. Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, which the general public commonly thinks of as AI, are included here. However, Jensen Huang views the lower layers—energy, chips, and infrastructure—as more important than the models themselves. This is because no matter how excellent a model is, it is difficult to maintain competitiveness without the power, semiconductors, and data centers to run it.

The Future of AI: Lower Layers (Infrastructure) are Determined First Ultimately, the market has begun to view AI as a new industrial revolution that will transform the entire spectrum of electricity, steel, factories, semiconductors, communication networks, and the robotics industry. Jensen Huang is explaining the structure of this massive transformation through the simple diagram of a 'five-layer cake.' This is why investors have started to look closely at the bottom layers: energy and infrastructure. The judgment is spreading that the future value of the AI industry could be determined first by the foundational infrastructure of the lower layers, rather than by the services of the upper layers.

[※ This article was written for the purpose of providing investment information, and investment decisions and responsibilities lie with the investor. AI was utilized in the process of writing this article.]