In May, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made a bold proclamation, stating that “the next industrial revolution has begun,” with AI poised to drive “significant productivity gains.” Industry insiders can see that Huang wasn’t exaggerating — the demand for Nvidia’s cutting-edge AI chip, Blackwell, is skyrocketing.
“Blackwell is in full production, Blackwell is as planned, and the demand for Blackwell is insane,” Huang excitedly shared with CNBC just last week. “Everybody wants to have the most, and everybody wants to be first.”
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Nvidia initially unveiled Blackwell in March, touting it as the most powerful AI chip globally with enhanced security features, superior performance, and expanded memory capacity. Major players in AI, including OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Google, are eagerly adopting Blackwell to enhance their AI initiatives.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang showcases the new Blackwell GPU chip, alongside the Hopper GPU chip, in March 2024. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
“There is currently nothing better than NVIDIA hardware for AI,” stated Tesla and xAI CEO Elon Musk around the time of the initial announcement.
While Blackwell faced some production setbacks, causing delays, Nvidia CFO Colette Kress assured stakeholders in late August that these issues have been resolved. The company anticipates shipping “several billion dollars” worth of the chip in Q4 2024.
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The cost of the Blackwell chip ranges between $30,000 to $40,000 and required a hefty investment of $10 billion for development.
Huang emphasized that Nvidia has significantly revamped its platform with Blackwell and plans to continue enhancements. The performance leap from its 2022 Hopper chip to Blackwell is two to threefold, translating into a doubling of revenue for Nvidia’s clients, as per Huang.
“We are witnessing the dawn of the next wave of AI, the most significant wave of AI,” Huang remarked to CNBC. “Organizations worldwide are leveraging AI as crucial digital assets, AI assistants, co-pilots, and other innovative applications. They are harnessing AI, generative AI, to transform their product development processes and product offerings.”
Expressing concerns about the overwhelming demand for Nvidia’s technologies and software, Huang recently announced a partnership with Accenture to train 30,000 Accenture employees in utilizing Nvidia’s technology.
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