Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions.
“The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.”
Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called Blackwell, he told the audience.
Photo: Sam Yeh, AFP
The Santa Clara, California-based business outsources the physical production of its hardware, and Nvidia’s suppliers are making progress in catching up, he said.
Nvidia’s chips are used by data center operators to develop and run artificial intelligence (AI) models. The feverish appetite for such services has sent its sales — and stock price — soaring. The shares have more than doubled this year, following a 239 percent run-up last year.
The stock gained 8.1 percent to US$116.91 in New York on Wednesday, marking its biggest single-day rise in six weeks.
Nvidia counts on a small number of customers — data center operators such as Microsoft Corp and Meta Platforms Inc — for much of its revenue.
Huang was asked whether the massive AI spending is providing customers with a return on investment. That has been a concern during the tech industry’s AI frenzy.
However, he said companies have no choice other than to embrace “accelerated computing.” Nvidia’s technology speeds up conventional workloads — data processing — as well as handling AI tasks that older technology cannot manage, he said.
Nvidia leans heavily on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) for production of its most important chips and does so because that company is the best in its field by a large margin, Huang said.
However, geopolitical tension has raised risks. China sees Taiwan, where TSMC is based, as a rogue province, stoking concerns that it might try to annex it. That could potentially cut off Nvidia from the key supplier.
Huang said he develops much of the company’s technology in-house and that should allow Nvidia to switch orders to alternative suppliers. Still, such a change would likely result in a reduction in quality of his chips, he said.
TSMC’s “agility and their capability to respond to our needs is just incredible,” he said. “And so we use them because they’re great, but if necessary, of course, we can always bring up others.”
TSMC shares yesterday rose 4.79 percent to close at NT$940 in Taipei trading. The stock has gained 51.94 percent since the beginning of this year.
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