Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Tuesday announced a flurry of new partnerships and dismissed concerns about an artificial intelligence (AI) bubble, saying the company’s latest chips are on track to generate half a trillion US dollars in revenue.
The Blackwell processor, Nvidia’s flagship AI accelerator, and the newer Rubin model are fueling an unprecedented surge of sales growth through next year, Huang said at a company presentation in Washington.
The event — Nvidia’s first GPU Technology Conference held in the US capital — highlighted the partnerships that the company is forging across the industry.
Photo: Bloomberg
The chipmaker is teaming up with Uber Technologies Inc, Palantir Technologies Inc and CrowdStrike Holdings Inc, among others, aiming to ensure its technology remains at the heart of the AI frenzy. Nvidia unveiled a new system to connect quantum computers with its AI chips.
Nvidia’s tie-ups also reflect its increasingly global ambitions. The company is planning a 1 billion euros (US$1.16 billion) data center in Germany with Deutsche Telekom AG and just announced a US$1 billion investment deal with Nokia Oyj. Huang also is poised to unveil pacts with Samsung Electronics Co and Hyundai Motor Group when he visits South Korea later this week.
“We have now reached our virtuous cycle, our inflection point,” Huang told thousands of attendees at a convention hall blocks from the White House. “This is quite extraordinary.”
Huang also emphasized the ways his company is helping advance US President Donald Trump’s economic agenda for building US manufacturing. The Nvidia chief delivered his remarks days before Trump is scheduled to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to finalize a trade deal that would ease years of trade tensions. Previous restrictions have effectively blocked Nvidia’s prized AI chips from China
Huang praised Trump’s commitment to winning the global competition in AI, but urged careful engagement with China because of the country’s massive software developer base and its growing technology capabilities.
However, much of the presentation focused on the AI industry reaching a turning point: Huang said that AI models are now powerful enough that customers are willing to pay for them — and that in turn would justify the costly build-out of computing infrastructure.
The remarks helped ease fears of an AI investment bubble, sending shares of Nvidia up 5 percent to a record closing high of US$201.03 in New York on Tuesday.
Nvidia extended gains to more than 8.5 percent in Asia after Trump said he would speak with Xi about the company’s Blackwell chip. Trump touted the chip as “super duper” and said that Huang recently brought a version of the accelerator to the Oval Office.
“I don’t believe we’re in an AI bubble,” Huang said during a Bloomberg Television interview after the presentation. “All of these different AI models we’re using — we’re using plenty of services and paying happily to do it.”
The Santa Clara, California-based company expects to ship 20 million units of its latest chips. A previous generation — Hopper — only accounted for 4 million units in its whole lifetime, Huang said.
Huang said that his projections for the Blackwell and Rubin chips did not include sales in China.
NEW IDENTITY: Known for its software, India has expanded into hardware, with its semiconductor industry growing from US$38bn in 2023 to US$45bn to US$50bn India on Saturday inaugurated its first semiconductor assembly and test facility, a milestone in the government’s push to reduce dependence on foreign chipmakers and stake a claim in a sector dominated by China. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened US firm Micron Technology Inc’s semiconductor assembly, test and packaging unit in his home state of Gujarat, hailing the “dawn of a new era” for India’s technology ambitions. “When young Indians look back in the future, they will see this decade as the turning point in our tech future,” Modi told the event, which was broadcast on his YouTube channel. The plant would convert
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said the DRAM supply crunch could extend through 2028, as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has led the world’s major memory makers to dramatically reduce production of standard DRAM and allocate a significant portion of their capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. The most severe supply constraints would stretch to the first half of next year due to “very limited” increases in new DRAM capacity worldwide, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told a news briefing. The company plans to increase monthly 12-inch wafer capacity to 20,000 in the first half of 2028 after a
Property transactions in the nation’s six special municipalities plunged last month, as a lengthy Lunar New Year holiday combined with ongoing credit tightening dampened housing market activity, data compiled by local land administration offices released on Monday showed. The six cities recorded a total of 10,480 property transfers last month, down 42.5 percent from January and marking the second-lowest monthly level on record, the data showed. “The sharp drop largely reflected seasonal factors and tighter credit conditions,” Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房屋) deputy research manager Chen Chin-ping (陳金萍) said. The nine-day Lunar New Year holiday fell in February this year, reducing
Zimbabwe’s ban on raw lithium exports is forcing Chinese miners to rethink their strategy, speeding up plans to process the metal locally instead of shipping it to China’s vast rechargeable battery industry. The country is Africa’s largest lithium producer and has one of the world’s largest reserves, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS). Zimbabwe already banned the export of lithium ore in 2022 and last year announced it would halt exports of lithium concentrates from January next year. However, on Wednesday it imposed the ban with immediate effect, leaving unclear what the lithium mining sector would do in the
RSS