America’s giant technology companies have gone from printing money(印钞，比喻轻松赚钱) to incinerating(烧掉，销毁) it. The market reckons Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft will collectively report negative free cashflows next year, owing to their extravagant(奢侈的，过度的) spending on data centres. Yet real fortunes are being made today from Silicon Valley’s gamble(赌博，冒险) on the future.
美国的大型科技公司已从印钞转向烧钱。市场预计，由于在数据中心上的巨额支出，Alphabet、亚马逊、Meta和微软明年将集体报告负自由现金流。然而，如今真正的财富正来自硅谷对未来的一场豪赌。
Three companies are expected to surpass(超过，超越) an astonishing $200bn of free cashflow apiece next year. One is Nvidia, an American darling(宠儿，备受喜爱的人或物) that designs the advanced processors needed to run artificial-intelligence models. The other two are Samsung and SK Hynix, a pair of South Korean outfits that dominate the market for the more mundane(平凡的，普通的) memory chips in phones, laptops and, increasingly, data centres. Their windfall(意外之财，横财) represents one of the greatest cross-border transfers(跨境转移) of cash in corporate history.
预计明年有三家公司各自将超过惊人的2000亿美元自由现金流。一家是英伟达，这家美国宠儿设计运行人工智能模型所需的高级处理器。另外两家是三星和SK海力士，这对韩国企业主导着手机、笔记本电脑以及日益增长的数据中心中更普通的存储芯片市场。它们的意外之财代表着企业史上最大规模的跨境现金转移之一。
Now a nation newly enamoured of(迷恋，倾心于) stock markets is discovering that shares can go down as well as up. Since peaking(达到顶峰) in June the stock prices of Samsung and SK Hynix have crashed by 41% and 52% respectively, wiping(抹去，消除) $1.2trn from South Korea’s highly concentrated stock market. Those of SK Hynix fell by more than a fifth this week as investors digested(消化，理解) a mere six-fold increase in its quarterly operating profit, compared with the year before. Samsung’s shares have not been this volatile(波动的，不稳定的) since the dotcom era(互联网泡沫时期).
如今，一个刚刚迷恋上股市的国家正在发现，股票可以涨也可以跌。自6月见顶以来，三星和SK海力士的股价分别暴跌41%和52%，使韩国高度集中的股市市值蒸发1.2万亿美元。本周，SK海力士股价下跌超过五分之一，因为投资者消化了其季度营业利润同比仅增长六倍的消息。三星的股价自互联网时代以来从未如此波动。
Picked, shovelled and quartered
被挑选、被铲起、被四分五裂