Nvidia CEO: Demand for Blackwell AI chip is “crazy”

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said demand for its next-generation Blackwell AI chip is “crazy.”

“Everyone wants to get as much as they can and everyone wants to be first,” Huang told CNBC.

Shares of the chipmaker rose about 3% in Wall Street trading on Thursday.

The Blackwell chip, which is expected to cost between $30,000 and $40,000 per unit, is in high demand from companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta and others building AI data centers to power products like ChatGPT and Copilot.

Nvidia has been a major beneficiary of the AI ​​boom, with its shares up about 150% so far this year. The company’s revenue continued to rise in the fiscal second quarter to $30.04 billion, up 122% year over year. The company expects sales of $32.5 billion in the current quarter.

“At a time when technology is moving so fast, it gives us an opportunity to double down, to really drive the innovation cycle so we can increase capacity, increase our productivity, reduce our costs, reduce our energy consumption,” Huang said. “We’re on track to do that, and everything is on track.” The company’s CFO, Colette Kress, said in August that the company expects to generate several billion dollars in revenue from the Blackwell chip in the company’s fiscal fourth quarter. Huang said that Nvidia plans to update its AI platform every year to increase performance by two to three times.