Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang tried to reassure investors Tuesday that his firm is at the center of the artificial intelligence boom while unveiling its latest products – including its long-awaited Blackwell Ultra computer chips.
Huang said the need for computer power made possible by its advanced AI computer chips has grown exponentially compared to one year ago as more companies are moving to dealing so-called “reasoning” models, which are able to perform more complex tasks than basic chatbots.
“Almost the entire world got it wrong,” said Huang, who riffed on stage for two hours without a teleprompter while clad in his trademark leather jacket and jeans at Nvidia’s GTC conference, which he called the “Super Bowl of AI.”
“The amount of computation we need as a result of agentic AI, as a result of reasoning, is easily 100 times more than we thought we needed this time last year,” Huang said.
Huang’s bullish remarks at the conference failed to land with investors. Nvidia’s stock sank more than 3% in late trading Tuesday. The stock closed at $115.73 and is down nearly 20% over the past month.
Wall Street has sought clarity from Nvidia and other Big Tech players following a major selloff in January sparked by Chinese startup DeepSeek – which claimed to have trained an advanced AI model for less than $6 million and without access to Nvidia’s best chips due to US export controls.
The release fueled concerns that Nvidia’s chips were less necessary than previously thought for AI development – and that companies could pare back their spending in response. So far, companies like Meta and Microsoft have said they are full steam ahead of AI-related spending.
During the event, Huang confirmed that its next GPU chip, the Blackwell Ultra, will begin shipping in the second half of this year. The Nvidia boss called demand for the product “amazing.”
Another upgraded family of chips called Vera Rubin, which will be more powerful and enable faster processing speeds than Blackwell, is on track for release in the second half of 2026, Huang added.
“If you take too long to answer a question, the customer is not going to come back. This is like web search,” Huang said.
Elsewhere, Huang revealed that Nvidia would partner with General Motors to help develop the automaker’s autonomous vehicles.
Nvidia technology will be used to assist the manufacturing and design process as well as in-vehicle computer systems, he said.
“The time for autonomous vehicles has arrived,” Huang said.
With Post wires
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