As AI dominates the headlines some big ones today centered on Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who spoke for nearly three hours at the chip maker’s packed global AI developers conference, laying out the massive transition in computing underway and announcing a raft of new projects.
One is a collaboration with Google DeepMind and Disney Research to develop an open-source physics engine called Newton that lets robots learn how to handle complex tasks with greater precision.
Disney Research will be one of the first to use Newton to advance its robotic character platform that powers next-generation entertainment robots, such as the expressive Star Wars-inspired BDX droids that joined Huang on stage during his GTC keynote.
“The BDX droids are just the beginning. We’re committed to bringing more characters to life in ways the world hasn’t seen before, and this collaboration with Disney Research, NVIDIA and Google DeepMind is a key part of that vision,” said Kyle Laughlin, SVP at Walt Disney Imagineering Research & Development, in the formal announcement. “This collaboration will allow us to create a new generation of robotic characters that are more expressive and engaging than ever before — and connect with our guests in ways that only Disney can.” Droids also wandered about recently at SXSW in a presentation by Disney Experiences chairman Josh D’Amaro and Disney Entertainment co-chairman Alan Bergman called The Future of World Building At Disney.
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Huang focused in the early part of his remarks on the massive transformation underway in computing. Commanding the stage in a leather biker jacket, he called it a seismic shift from “retrieval” – or creating content and then “fetching what we need.”
“Now, AI understands the content, what we are asking, and the meaning of our requests … and generates an answer for us rather than retrieving data, fundamentally changing how computing is done,” he said at his anticipated keynote address. GTC stands for GPU Technology Conference, a global artificial intelligence confab for developers, engineers, researchers, inventors and IT professionals focused on AI, computer graphics, data science, machine learning and autonomous machines. GPU is short for Graphics Processing Technology. There were thousands at the SAP Center (formerly the San Jose Arena) and many more watching on YouTube.
Huang talked of “agentic AI” – or AI that “has agency, can understand, can reason … and it can plan and take action. It can use tools.”
To meet anticipated demand from companies and consumers, AI needs more data centers, maybe a trillion dollars-worth. “General purpose computing has run its course,” he said, “and the world is going through a platform shift from hand-coded software running on a general-purpose computer, to AI. It’s at its tipping point.”
He’s describing a new way of building infrastructure, AI factories with one job only, “generating the tokens that we reconstitute as music, into words, into videos, into research.”
Nvidia’s website explains that tokens are tiny units of data that come from breaking down bigger chunks of information. AI models process tokens to learn the relationships between them and unlock capabilities including prediction, generation and reasoning. The faster tokens can be processed, the faster models can learn and respond.
Today’s conference kickoff followed a letter sent by over 400 Hollywood heavyweights to the Trump White House warning that the lucrative entertainment industry – one sector that runs a surplus balance of trade with the rest of the world – is threatened as AI giants try to skirt copyright laws to train so-caled “large language models” like ChatGPT.
Huang also introduced Blackwell Ultra, a new family of AI chips set to launch in the second half of 2025. He announced Nvidia’s next-generation graphics processor coming in 2026. There was more. But, despite the crowd and stream of projects, Nvidia shares sank 3.4% today, pulling tech stocks and the Nasdaq lower. The stock has been under pressure as investors weigh the speed of rollout, investment required and global competition in AI.
Broader market fears also tamped down stocks amid Donald Trump’s global trade wars and a meeting of the Federal Reserve, which will weigh in on the economy and interest rates tomorrow. Stocks have been battered for most of the past month.
GTC runs through March 21 with speakers and panels.
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