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.
CHIP RACE: Three years of overbroad export controls drove foreign competitors to pursue their own AI chips, and ‘cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,’ Nvidia said China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp’s H200s and is rejecting the artificial intelligence (AI) chip in favor of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI adviser David Sacks said, citing news reports. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) by bringing US competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signaled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work. “They’re rejecting our chips,” Sacks
NATIONAL SECURITY: Intel’s testing of ACM tools despite US government control ‘highlights egregious gaps in US technology protection policies,’ a former official said Chipmaker Intel Corp has tested chipmaking tools this year from a toolmaker with deep roots in China and two overseas units that were targeted by US sanctions, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Intel, which fended off calls for its CEO’s resignation from US President Donald Trump in August over his alleged ties to China, got the tools from ACM Research Inc, a Fremont, California-based producer of chipmaking equipment. Two of ACM’s units, based in Shanghai and South Korea, were among a number of firms barred last year from receiving US technology over claims they have
It is challenging to build infrastructure in much of Europe. Constrained budgets and polarized politics tend to undermine long-term projects, forcing officials to react to emergencies rather than plan for the future. Not in Austria. Today, the country is to officially open its Koralmbahn tunnel, the 5.9 billion euro (US$6.9 billion) centerpiece of a groundbreaking new railway that will eventually run from Poland’s Baltic coast to the Adriatic Sea, transforming travel within Austria and positioning the Alpine nation at the forefront of logistics in Europe. “It is Austria’s biggest socio-economic experiment in over a century,” said Eric Kirschner, an economist at Graz-based Joanneum
France is developing domestic production of electric vehicle (EV) batteries with an eye on industrial independence, but Asian experts are proving key in launching operations. In the Verkor factory outside the northern city of Dunkirk, which was inaugurated on Thursday, foreign specialists, notably from South Korea and Malaysia, are training the local staff. Verkor is the third battery gigafactory to open in northern France in a region that has become known as “Battery Valley.” At the Automotive Energy Supply Corp (AESC) factory near the city of Douai, where production has been under way for several months, Chinese engineers and technicians supervise French recruits. “They
RSS