Nvidia is one of the world’s biggest computer chip companies, best known for its line of graphics processing units or GPUs. Although the firm had its start in the world of consumer gaming, in recent years it’s grown into a true tech titan with diverse investments in self-driving cars, cloud computing, supercomputing, and artificial intelligence. The parallel processing power of Nvidia’s GPUs has proven to be particularly good at machine learning tasks, and its chips are in high demand not only from AI researchers but any business with an interest in artificial intelligence. From 2015 onwards, Nvidia’s share price grew sharply, allowing the company to make some key acquisitions, including UK chip designer ARM, which it announced it would purchase in September 2020 for $40 billion. Nvidia was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, who is currently the firm’s CEO. Known for his leather jackets and upbeat corporate presentations, Huang is a familiar figure to anyone interested in tech.
The venue normally fits 12,000 people, but Nvidia says it’s cramming in as many 14,000 by filling the center of the arena, too — where myself, fellow press, and analysts are seated. The screen is massive. You can watch the keynote here or on YouTube starting at 6:40PM PT — it’s running a little late.
It’s not the longest line I’ve ever seen, but it is glacial; crowds already stretched through the casino halls 2.5 hours before the keynote. Metal detectors are coming up. A sea of people behind and in front. Interest in Nvidia and its stock price are at record highs right now.
Shares were up 3.43 percent to $149.43, besting a previous closing high of $148.88 set in November. At Huang’s keynote tonight, the company is expected to announce its latest consumer graphics cards. Nvidia’s rocketing value, however, has been driven by AI chip demand. Nvidia’s 52-week intraday high is $152.89.
If there were any doubt we’d see a new generation of Nvidia graphics hardware at its CES 2025 LAN party, that’s evaporated.
The latest hint comes from @MysteryLupin on X, who’s had early leaks before, with these pictures showing a 16-inch HP Omen Max and specs including an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 GPU.
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The AMD Strix Point CPU in the Zephyrus G16 gives this gaming laptop a battery life boost over the Intel version.
The new Nvidia App “reduces performance by up to 15% in some games,” according to Tom’s Hardware. Nvidia acknowledged that there is a reported problem and suggested a fix:
We are aware of a reported performance issue related to Game Filters and are actively looking into it. You can turn off Game Filters from the NVIDIA App Settings > Features > Overlay > Game Filters and Photo Mode, and then relaunch your game.
Tom’s Hardware says the fix “does indeed work.”
Nvidia has just released its latest driver (566.36) and it’s the first to include the optional Nvidia app instead of the GeForce Experience. It also includes Game Ready support for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and a fix for Forza Horizon 5 and God of War Ragnarök crashes. You can download it over at Nvidia’s website.
[NVIDIA]
Bloomberg explores Amazon’s $8 billion partnership with Anthropic that could advance Amazon’s Trainium hardware and software tools enough for the AWS provider to cut into Nvidia’s stranglehold on the $100-billion-plus market for AI chips:
Trainium2 is the company’s third generation of artificial intelligence chip. By industry reckoning, this is a make-or-break moment. Either the third attempt sells in sufficient volume to make the investment worthwhile, or it flops and the company finds a new path.
$14.8 billion profit in Q1, $16.6 billion in Q2, and now $19.3 billion in Q3 of fiscal 2025 — that’s profit, not earnings. (Earnings were $35.08 billion, up from $30.04 billion last quarter.)
The vast majority is from AI data center, of course — but gaming did have a 14 percent bump. It’s a $3B-a-quarter business, while data center is a $30B one.
From Nvidia’s FAQ:
No, Founders memberships will still have unlimited playtime hours for life, as long as there is no lapse in their membership.
Also:
Founders can upgrade to Ultimate and return to their prior Founders benefits at any time without penalty, as long as there is no lapse in their payments.
“It was functional, but the design flaw caused the yield to be low. It was 100% Nvidia’s fault,” Nvidia’s Jensen Huang tells Reuters, effectively confirming The Information’s report from August about why its new flagship AI chips won’t ship in large amounts right away.
He says it’s now fixed, but the timeline stays the same: Q4 for first shipments.
Nvidia has released a new Game Ready driver (566.03) that includes support for Alan Wake II: The Lake House, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Red Dead Redemption, and more. The 566.03 release also includes support for 32 new G-Sync compatible monitors. If you use Bluestacks or Corsair iCUE equipment, hold off on this driver as there’s a known high CPU usage issue.
Nvidia’s beta all-in-one app is set to replace GeForce experience later this year, and it might fully launch with the RTX 50-series. Hardware leaker kopite7kimi says it will be released officially together with Nvidia’s next-gen GPUs. Nvidia is holding a CES 2025 keynote in January, where we’re expecting to see the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080.
Nvidia just said it won’t begin to ramp production of its new Blackwell GPUs until its fourth fiscal quarter, which begins in November.
Nvidia just reported a record $30 billion quarter, and the vast majority of it ($22B) was data center compute... will it set aside some of its latest and greatest for gamers instead of AI? If so, I wouldn’t bet on prices being low.
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Nvidia is announcing an updated RTX 4070 with GDDR6 memory today. “To improve supply and availability to meet strong demand, we’re introducing the GeForce RTX 4070 with extra fast GDDR6 memory,” says Nvidia. All of the other specs of the GPU are the same, and Nvidia says “it offers similar performance” in games and apps, despite the decrease in bandwidth from GDDR6X to GDDR6 memory. This updated RTX 4070 will be available worldwide starting in September.
AMD is acquiring ZT Systems, a leading provider of AI infrastructure. AMD is calling it a “next major step” for its AI training and inferencing solutions, in a move that will clearly help it compete with Nvidia’s dominance in AI offerings. ZT Systems will join the AMD’s data center solutions group once the $4.9 billion transaction closes.
