San Francisco (AFP) – Nvidia chief Jensen Huang is expected to showcase cutting-edge chips for artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing on Tuesday, shrugging off talk of China’s DeepSeek disrupting the market. Huang’s keynote presentation at Nvidia’s annual developers conference should pack the SAP Center in the Silicon Valley city of San Jose, where the Sharks NHL hockey team plays. Industry watchers expect Huang to spotlight Nvidia’s latest Blackwell line of graphics processing units (GPUs), including new updates in the works.
The AI boom propelled Nvidia stock prices to stratospheric levels until a steep sell-off early this year triggered by the sudden success of DeepSeek. The stock, one of the most traded on Wall Street, is down more than nine percent this year despite a recent rebound from a March low. China-based DeepSeek shook up the world of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) with the debut of a low-cost but high-performance model that challenges the hegemony of OpenAI and other big-spending behemoths. But several countries have questioned DeepSeek’s handling of data, which the firm says is collected in “secure servers located in the People’s Republic of China.”
Nvidia high-end GPUs are in hot demand by tech giants building data centers to power artificial intelligence, and some say a low-cost option could weaken the Silicon Valley chip star’s business. Yurts co-founder and CEO Ben Van Roo, whose company specializes in keeping sensitive data protected while allowing access by AI models, believes DeepSeek’s popularity bodes well for Nvidia. “DeepSeek drastically accelerated the desire to consume these models,” Van Roo told AFP. “You’ve opened the world’s appetite even more (to generative AI) and independent of the fact that it’s Chinese, I think it was a good day for Nvidia.”
– Blackwell Booming – Nvidia has ramped up production of its top-of-the-line Blackwell processors for powering AI, logging billions in sales in its first quarter on the market. “AI is advancing at light speed” and is setting the stage “for the next wave of AI to revolutionize the largest industries,” Huang told financial analysts recently. Huang believes Nvidia chips and software platforms will continue to power or train AI for robots, cars, and digital “agents,” the term used for AI that can execute decisions instead of humans.
The CEO is also likely to talk up a leap to quantum computing. After several dashed predictions, quantum computing is accelerating rapidly with actual use cases and scientific breakthroughs expected within years, not decades. US tech giants, startups, banks, and pharmaceutical companies are pouring investments into this revolutionary technology. GPUs like those made by Nvidia are ideal for handling multiple computing tasks simultaneously, making them well suited for quantum computing. The US and China are racing ahead in quantum development, with Washington imposing export restrictions on the technology.
Nvidia reported that it finished last year with record high revenue of $130.5 billion, driven by demand for its chips to power artificial intelligence in data centers. Nvidia projected revenue of $43 billion in the current fiscal quarter, topping analyst expectations.
© 2024 AFP
