Mr Huang’s Singapore stop is part of an Asian tour and comes after a Japan visit, where he said he would prioritise Tokyo’s demand for GPUs – graphics processing units now used extensively for AI development – amid extremely high market demand, Reuters reported.
On Wednesday, Mr Huang was asked about rumours of delayed shipments of Nvidia’s chips to China. He again pointed to a surge in demand for Nvidia’s GPUs, noting there was now a “second wave” globally from countries and companies looking to replicate generative AI tech.
Generative AI uses deep-learning models that can create new content based on past data that they were trained on, with chatbot ChatGPT perhaps the most famous example thus far.
“Our sales this year was a big surprise for the world and it was a big surprise for our supply chain …. while we’re catching up to demand of our customers, new demand is coming in,” said Mr Huang.
Nvidia last month reported US$18.12 billion in revenue in the third quarter, up 206 per cent from a year ago and an increase of 34 per cent from the previous quarter.
Reporters also quizzed Mr Huang on a recent report on Singapore accounting for about 15 per cent or US$2.7 billion of Nvidia’s revenue for the third quarter, jumping 404.1 per cent from the same period a year ago. The country was fourth behind the United States, Taiwan and China in Nvidia’s sales revenue ranking for that quarter.
Nvidia clarified that such country revenue figures may not reflect actual shipments, due to many companies being headquartered in Singapore and thus billed here. The chips may have been shipped elsewhere instead.
Nonetheless, demand for GPUs in Singapore is large and growing, and a “significant amount” was shipped to Singapore, said Mr Huang, adding that much of the demand here is fuelled by cloud service providers supporting AI start-ups.
He predicted that GPUs would pave the way for a whole new industry and new sector of the economy.
“Data comes into this computer, this GPU and what comes out of it (is) intelligence,” said Mr Huang. “And every country is very excited about this and wants to get involved, because you want to use your own data (and) manufacture your own intelligence.”
Source: CNA
