Nvidia Reveals flagship AI Chip, the B200, with a Focus on Expanding Market Leadership

Nvidia  shows up in a new tab Chief Executive Jensen Huang started his company’s yearly developer conference on Monday with a bunch of announcements that are meant to keep the chip maker at the top of the AI industry.

Huang showed off Nvidia’s newest chip, which is 30 times faster at some jobs than its predecessor, on a stage in a hockey arena in the middle of Silicon Valley.

He also talked about a new set of software tools that will make it easier for developers to sell AI models to companies that use Nvidia technology. Most of the biggest tech companies in the world are Nvidia users.

The chips and software that Nvidia announces at GTC 2024 will help show if the company can keep its 80% market share for AI chips.

Huang, wearing his famous leather jacket, joked that the day’s keynote would be full of hard maths and science. “I hope you realise this is not a concert,” he said.

It was a nod to how Nvidia, which used to be mostly known among computer gamers, is now as well-known as tech giants like Microsoft  and has become a Wall Street star, with sales that more than doubled in its most recent fiscal year to over $60 billion.

It’s called the B200, and it’s Nvidia’s new top-of-the-line chip. It’s made up of two squares of silicon that are the same size as the company’s previous chip.

The B200 “Blackwell” chip is 30 times faster at tasks like serving up chatbot answers. However, Huang did not say much about how well it works when it comes to processing huge amounts of data to train those chatbots, which is the main reason for Nvidia’s huge sales growth. He also didn’t say how much it was.
Though Huang made some announcements, they didn’t add to the rise. Nvidia’s shares have gone up 240% in the last year, making the company the third most valuable on the U.S. stock market, after Microsoft and Apple.

During extended trading, Nvidia stock fell 1.4%, and Super Micro Computer , which uses Nvidia’s chips to make AI-optimized computers, fell 4%. Stock in Advanced Micro Devices , which starts a new tab, fell almost 3% during the keynote.

A lot of big companies, like Nvidia, are owned by Tom Plumb, CEO and portfolio manager at Plumb Funds. He said the Blackwell chip wasn’t a surprise.
“But it shows that this company is still the best at graphics processing and on the cutting edge.” That doesn’t mean AMD and other companies won’t be able to get into the market. “But it shows that they have a pretty big lead,” Plumb said.

Other big companies that have bought Nvidia chips include Amazon.com , Microsoft, OpenAI, Alphabet’s , and Oracle . These companies plan to use the new chip in the cloud computing services they offer and for their own AI products.

Nvidia is also changing from selling single chips to selling whole systems. It has 72 AI chips and 36 core processors in its most recent version. The whole thing weighs 3,000 pounds (1,361 kg) and has 600,000 parts.
Analysts think that Nvidia’s market share will drop by a few percentage points in 2024. This is because Nvidia’s biggest customers are making their own chips and new goods from competitors are coming out.

“Rivals like AMD, Intel , opens new tab, startups, and even Big Tech’s own chip aspirations threaten to chip away at Nvidia’s market share, particularly among cost-conscious enterprise customers,” Jason Bourne of Insider Intelligence said.

Nvidia is best known for its hardware, but the company has also made a lot of software.

Microservices are the new software tools that make systems more efficient for a wide range of uses. This makes it easier for a business to use an AI model in its work, similar to how a good computer operating system can help apps work well.
Along with AI software, Nvidia also worked on software that uses 3-D models to simulate the real world. Huang also said that firms Ansys , opens new tab, Cadence , opens new tab, and Synopsys  would work together on designing cars, jets, and other goods. After Huang spoke, shares of all three companies went up by about 3% in late trading.

The CEO of Nvidia, Huang, also said that Apple’s new Vision Pro headset would be able to stream 3D worlds.

In addition, Nvidia released a new line of chips made for cars that can now run apps inside the car. The company said that electric car makers BYD (002594.SZ), opens new tab, and Xpeng will both use its new chips. This added to its already strong partnerships with Chinese automakers.

Huang also talked about a new line of chips for making humanoid robots near the end of his opening speech. He then asked some of the robots that were made with these chips to join him on stage.