Nvidia dispels fears about running out of chips during AI boom

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Nvidia chief executive officer Jensen Huang, fresh off an upbeat quarterly report that sent his company’s shares soaring, dispelled one of investors’ biggest concerns: that chip production won’t keep up with demand.

Though Nvidia didn’t give long-term projections Wednesday, Huang said that supply will “substantially increase for the rest of this year and next year.”

The company relies on vendors such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samsung Electronics Co. for components, and a lack of adequate inventory was seen as a challenge to its growth run.

In an interview Wednesday, Huang stressed that the company was doing everything it can to stay on top of surging demand.

“We’re focused on increasing our supply,” Huang said. “We have to do that with great urgency, and we are.”

Nvidia has a commanding lead in the market for artificial intelligence (AI) processors, which handle the heavy workloads needed to power tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Its position has made it the world’s most valuable chipmaker — with a market capitalisation above $1tn — and the shift to AI is only beginning, Huang said.

Read: Nvidia surge results in historic $1tn market valuation

Accelerated computing, which speeds through specific tasks by breaking them up into smaller parts and working on them in parallel, is taking over, he argues.

“The big mega theme is that the world’s computer data centers are transitioning to a new model, from general purpose computing to accelerated computing,” he said.

Nvidia co-founder believes there’s a trillion dollars’ worth of data centre infrastructure around the world that has to make this change. The company reported sales of $13.5bn last quarter, more than double from a year earlier.

Such broad shifts happen rarely and bring huge opportunities for companies that have the right products to exploit them, Huang said.

“Every 15 years, you see a new platform shift,” he said. “It’s happening right now in real-time.”