In May, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said “the next industrial revolution has begun,” and AI will drive “great productivity gains.” It looks like you’re right – industry demand for Nvidia’s next-generation AI chip, Blackwell, is through the roof.
“Blackwell is in full production, Blackwell is on schedule, and demand for Blackwell is crazy,” Huang told CNBC on Thursday. “Everyone wants to have more, and everyone wants to be the first.”
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Nvidia first announced Blackwell in March and said it was the world’s most powerful AI chip with advanced security capabilities, better performance, and more memory. Big names in AI, including OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Google, will use Blackwell to power their AI efforts.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang shows off the new Blackwell GPU chip, left, and the Hopper GPU chip, right, in March 2024. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
“Right now there is nothing better than NVIDIA hardware for AI,” said Tesla and XAI CEO Elon Musk, at the time.
Since the initial announcement, Blackwell has hit a few snags in production, leading to delays. Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said in late August that the company has fixed the issue and expects to ship a “billion dollar” chip in the fourth quarter of 2024.
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The chip costs between $30,000 and $40,000 and took $10 billion to develop.
Huang said Nvidia has updated its platform extensively with Blackwell, and intends to continue to update it. Nvidia has increased performance by two to three times from its 2022 Hopper chip to its Blackwell chip, which Huang says increases revenue for Nvidia customers by two to three times.
“What we’re looking at now is the beginning of the next wave of AI, the big wave of AI,” Huang told CNBC. “This is about companies around the world using AI to be more productive like their digital workers and AI agents and pilots and yet people are defining themselves, and using AI, generative AI, to change the way they build their products and their products. the products they build.”
Huang said last month that high demand for Nvidia’s technology and software was keeping him up at night. On Wednesday, Nvidia partnered with Accenture to train 30,000 Accenture employees in Nvidia technology.
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