Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions.
“The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.”
Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called Blackwell, he told the audience.
Photo: Sam Yeh, AFP
The Santa Clara, California-based business outsources the physical production of its hardware, and Nvidia’s suppliers are making progress in catching up, he said.
Nvidia’s chips are used by data center operators to develop and run artificial intelligence (AI) models. The feverish appetite for such services has sent its sales — and stock price — soaring. The shares have more than doubled this year, following a 239 percent run-up last year.
The stock gained 8.1 percent to US$116.91 in New York on Wednesday, marking its biggest single-day rise in six weeks.
Nvidia counts on a small number of customers — data center operators such as Microsoft Corp and Meta Platforms Inc — for much of its revenue.
Huang was asked whether the massive AI spending is providing customers with a return on investment. That has been a concern during the tech industry’s AI frenzy.
However, he said companies have no choice other than to embrace “accelerated computing.” Nvidia’s technology speeds up conventional workloads — data processing — as well as handling AI tasks that older technology cannot manage, he said.
Nvidia leans heavily on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) for production of its most important chips and does so because that company is the best in its field by a large margin, Huang said.
However, geopolitical tension has raised risks. China sees Taiwan, where TSMC is based, as a rogue province, stoking concerns that it might try to annex it. That could potentially cut off Nvidia from the key supplier.
Huang said he develops much of the company’s technology in-house and that should allow Nvidia to switch orders to alternative suppliers. Still, such a change would likely result in a reduction in quality of his chips, he said.
TSMC’s “agility and their capability to respond to our needs is just incredible,” he said. “And so we use them because they’re great, but if necessary, of course, we can always bring up others.”
TSMC shares yesterday rose 4.79 percent to close at NT$940 in Taipei trading. The stock has gained 51.94 percent since the beginning of this year.
When an apartment comes up for rent in Germany’s big cities, hundreds of prospective tenants often queue down the street to view it, but the acute shortage of affordable housing is getting scant attention ahead of today’s snap general election. “Housing is one of the main problems for people, but nobody talks about it, nobody takes it seriously,” said Andreas Ibel, president of Build Europe, an association representing housing developers. Migration and the sluggish economy top the list of voters’ concerns, but analysts say housing policy fails to break through as returns on investment take time to register, making the
‘SILVER LINING’: Although the news caused TSMC to fall on the local market, an analyst said that as tariffs are not set to go into effect until April, there is still time for negotiations US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he would likely impose tariffs on semiconductor, automobile and pharmaceutical imports of about 25 percent, with an announcement coming as soon as April 2 in a move that would represent a dramatic widening of the US leader’s trade war. “I probably will tell you that on April 2, but it’ll be in the neighborhood of 25 percent,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club when asked about his plan for auto tariffs. Asked about similar levies on pharmaceutical drugs and semiconductors, the president said that “it’ll be 25 percent and higher, and it’ll
CHIP BOOM: Revenue for the semiconductor industry is set to reach US$1 trillion by 2032, opening up opportunities for the chip pacakging and testing company, it said ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控), the world’s largest provider of outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) services, yesterday launched a new advanced manufacturing facility in Penang, Malaysia, aiming to meet growing demand for emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The US$300 million facility is a critical step in expanding ASE’s global footprint, offering an alternative for customers from the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea and China to assemble and test chips outside of Taiwan amid efforts to diversify supply chains. The plant, the company’s fifth in Malaysia, is part of a strategic expansion plan that would more than triple
Taiwanese artificial intelligence (AI) server makers are expected to make major investments in Texas in May after US President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office and amid his rising tariff threats, Taiwan Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers’ Association (TEEMA, 台灣電子電機公會) chairman Richard Lee (李詩欽) said yesterday. The association led a delegation of seven AI server manufacturers to Washington, as well as the US states of California, Texas and New Mexico, to discuss land and tax issues, as Taiwanese firms speed up their production plans in the US with many of them seeing Texas as their top option for investment, Lee said. The
RSS