Nvidia, the artificial intelligence (AI) chip leader, will build seven new supercomputers for the United States Department of Energy (DOE), CEO Jensen Huang has said.
The company has $500bn in bookings for its AI chips, Huang said on Tuesday in a keynote address at the company’s GTC event in Washington, DC, the US capital.
The first company to be worth more than $4 trillion, Nvidia is at the core of the global rollout of AI. It is striking deals around the world while also navigating a US-China trade war that could determine which country’s technology is most used across the globe.
Investors are looking for clarity on what chips the tech company will be able to sell to the vast Chinese market, but Huang in his keynote speech praised policies by US President Donald Trump while announcing new products and deals. These included network technology that will let Nvidia AI chips work with quantum computers.
The supercomputers Nvidia is building for the DOE will help the US maintain and develop its nuclear weapons arsenal. The supercomputers will also be used to research alternative energy sources such as nuclear fusion. The largest of the supercomputers for the DOE will be built with Oracle and contain 100,000 of Nvidia’s Blackwell chips.
“Putting the weight of the nation behind pro-energy growth completely changed the game,” Huang said. “If this didn’t happen, we could have been in a bad situation, and I want to thank President Trump for that.”
Nvidia shares were up 3.3 percent at $197.82 on Tuesday afternoon.
New deals
Nvidia also announced new deals with Finnish telecom equipment maker Nokia to target the AI communications market. Nvidia will invest $1bn for a 2.9 percent stake in Nokia and it also introduced a new product line called Arc, designed to work with telecommunications equipment.
The news sent Nokia’s shares soaring 20.86 percent, a high last touched in late January 2016.
Huang said Nvidia will work with Nokia to improve the power efficiency of the company’s base stations for 6G, the next generation of wireless data technology.
“We’re going to take this new technology and we’ll be able to upgrade millions of base stations around the world,” Huang said.
Altogether, Nvidia has $500bn in bookings for its Blackwell and Rubin chips over the next five quarters, the CEO said.
Nvidia also announced a partnership with Palantir Technologies, a company that works closely with the US government. However, the focus of Nvidia’s partnership was on Palantir’s commercial business, where Nvidia will help it speed up solving logistics problems for companies such as home improvement retailer Lowe’s. Such corporate work was a longtime stronghold of Intel.
Nvidia announced a new self-driving car technology platform called Hyperion. Huang said that Nvidia is partnering with Uber to create a network of robotaxis. “This is going to be a new computing platform for us, and I’m expecting it to be quite successful,” Huang said.
“These announcements all show Nvidia’s ability to extend its reach beyond its core data centre customers,” said Gil Luria, an analyst at DA Davidson. “While these projects pale in comparison to the capex by the hyperscalers such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta, they could create new markets for Nvidia down the line.”
Pursuing government work
Huang took the stage in a packed conference hall as Trump continued his tour of Asia this week ahead of his expected meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday. The flow of advanced technology between the two nations is likely to be at the centre of trade discussions, with access to Nvidia’s chips a key issue.
Nvidia’s annual GPU Technology Conference (GTC) event is being held for the first time in Washington, DC, a sign that the company is pursuing work with the US government and contractors clustered around the capital.
The US government is focused on AI and expanding its computing power. On Monday, Nvidia competitor Advanced Micro Devices unveiled a $1bn partnership with the DOE to construct two supercomputers that will tackle large scientific problems ranging from nuclear power to cancer treatments to national security.
Former US President Joe Biden clamped down on sales of Nvidia’s most advanced chips to China, but Trump has wavered in his policy in his second term, at first restricting exports of Nvidia’s AI chips designed for the China market before reversing course in July.
Huang has argued that Nvidia needs access to some $50bn in potential sales from the Chinese market to fund US-based research and development to maintain his company’s edge.
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