A Chinese podcast · Same story, 4 levels
AI 烧钱大战再升级：Microsoft、Meta 资本开支冲向天文数字
The AI Spending War Escalates: Microsoft and Meta Push Capex Toward Astronomical Numbers
About this story
A medium Chinese listening story: Microsoft and Meta reported soaring AI capex, ~$97B and $130-145B, with the market now judging stocks on spending, echoing Google's negative-cash-flow moment. HSK 3 Chinese listening practice.
This is an HSK 3-4 Chinese listening episode that runs about 1 minute. The full Mandarin script is shown with tap-for-pinyin and a line-by-line English translation, so you can listen and read at once — comprehensible input in the sense of Stephen Krashen's i+1 theory. It teaches 10 key vocabulary words such as 提高、担心、重要 and walks through 3 grammar patterns, each explained in English with examples. The same news story is retold at 4 difficulty levels — use the level selector above to find the version that is challenging but still understandable for you.
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原文Read the complete story in Chinese. Reveal pinyin and English only when you need them.
English transcript reference
This week, two American tech giants, Microsoft and Meta, turned in new earnings reports.
But what everyone cares about most has shifted from "how much did they make" to "how much will they spend."
Spend on what?
The answer is still those two letters: AI.
To build AI, they have to buy mountains of servers and chips and build data center after data center, all staggeringly expensive.
Microsoft says it spent about ninety-seven billion dollars over the past year, and next year the number will climb more than twenty percent.
The year after that, it could shoot past one hundred seventy billion dollars.
Meta isn't falling behind either, raising this year's spending to between one hundred thirty and one hundred forty-five billion dollars.
Next year, the money it spends could be almost eighty percent more than this year.
These numbers are each scarier than the last.
More subtly, in today's stock market, judging a company is almost as much about its "spending plan" as about its earnings.
Spend too much, and the stock price can drop right away.
Just days ago, Google said that it had spent so much on AI that its cash flow turned negative for the first time.
So many people are starting to worry: this "AI spending war" that no one dares to stop, can it be earned back in the end?
Listen again
Try it without the transcript and notice what sounds clearer.
What vocabulary does this episode teach?
词汇把开支提高到 = raised spending to.
很多人开始担心 = many people are starting to worry.
和看它花钱一样重要 = as important as its spending.
要买海量的服务器和芯片 = have to buy mountains of servers and chips.
Microsoft 说 = Microsoft says.
两家科技巨头 = two tech giants.
交出了新的财报 = turned in new earnings reports.
买海量的服务器 = buy mountains of servers.
服务器和芯片 = servers and chips.
盖一座座数据中心 = build data center after data center.
* beyond level超纲词
What grammar patterns appear in this episode?
语法从 A，变成了 B
从 A 变成 B = "shift from A to B".
已经从"赚了多少钱"，变成了"要花多少钱"。
一个比一个……
一个比一个 + adj = "each one more … than the last".
这些数字，一个比一个吓人。
和……一样重要
和 X 一样 Y = "as Y as X".
看一家公司，几乎和看它花钱的计划一样重要。
Proper Nouns
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