Nvidia Corp on Tuesday told investors that it is focused on maintaining growth with new products, including speedier data center chips, rather than embarking on more aggressive stock buyback plans as some shareholders had hoped.
Nvidia chief financial officer Colette Kress told an investors’ meeting that the company’s priority is using cash to expand its business.
Nvidia has bought back US$2 billion in stock this quarter, she said.
Photo: Tyrone Siu, Reuters
However, the company has not increased its budget for repurchases.
Nvidia has US$5 billion of buyback authorization left, Kress said.
Some investors had been eyeing additional buybacks after Nvidia walked away from a US$40 billion plan to acquire Arm Ltd last month, Citigroup Inc and Bank of America Corp said.
Nvidia shares slipped as much as 2.5 percent following Kress’ remarks, but soon recovered.
Nvidia’s focus is new products and technology aimed at continuing its rapid growth in artificial intelligence (AI) processing, it said.
Graphics chips based on the new “Hopper” design are to debut later this year, the company said.
The processors are created with as many as 80 billion transistors and — when paired with new connecting chips — would massively speed up the development of software that understands human speech and does genomic research.
Under Nvidia chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), the firm has parlayed its dominance of graphics chips prized by computer gamers into a lucrative position in server technology. The company supplies chips to the owners of some of the world’s largest data centers, which use the technology to power the AI software needed to make sense of the growing flood of digital information.
Nvidia’s Hopper technology, named for computer science pioneer Grace Hopper, is its latest offering. It contains circuitry specifically designed to run so-called transformer machine learning models, which are used to improve the way that machines respond to human speech.
Hopper would also better link with other chips, allowing it to remove some of the bottlenecks caused by transferring huge data sets between parts of a computer.
Nvidia is to rely on contract manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) to make the chips.
Alibaba Cloud, Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services, Alphabet Inc’s Google Cloud and Microsoft Corp’s Azure are among the large companies that would adopt the new chips, Nvidia said.
In addition, computer makers such as Dell Technologies Inc and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co are to offer machines based on the silicon.
Nvidia also announced the availability of the Grace CPU Superchip, its brand name for a new central processing unit for high-end data center computing.
That product is its initial foray into the bigger market for CPUs — a field where Intel Corp technology remains dominant, but is facing greater pressure from new entrants.
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his