Nvidia chief Jensen Huang showcased cutting-edge chips for artificial intelligence on Tuesday. He also presented new applications for the technology. He shrugged off talk of China’s DeepSeek disrupting the market and dangers from US President Donald Trump’s trade wars.
Huang gave a hotly anticipated keynote presentation at Nvidia’s annual developers conference. The event packed the SAP Center in the Silicon Valley city of San Jose, home of the Sharks NHL hockey team.
The Taiwan-born tech titan billed the event as an AI “Super Bowl.” An audience of more than 20,000 sat through his two-hour-plus address announcing the company’s latest updates.
“The difference is that everyone is a winner at this Super Bowl,” he said, promoting the universal benefits of AI technology.
New Chips and Partnerships
Huang used the annual speech to unveil developments and tie-ups at the company he co-founded more than three decades ago. Nvidia has seen stratospheric growth. The AI frenzy stems largely from the company’s core product: graphics processing units (GPUs).
Huang spotlighted the updates to Nvidia’s latest Blackwell line of GPUs. He also introduced new hardware and software for robotics and telecommunications.
The announcements included a partnership with General Motors focused on developing driverless vehicles. These vehicles would feature an Nvidia-made, in-vehicle computing system that can deliver up to 1,000 trillion operations per second.
He also unveiled a telecoms project involving T-Mobile and Cisco Systems. Nvidia will help create AI-ready hardware for wireless 6G networks, the successor to today’s 5G.
Stock pressure
The AI boom has propelled Nvidia stock prices to historic levels. However, the stock saw a steep sell-off earlier this year. The sudden success of DeepSeek and the instability of Trump’s tariff battles with key trading partners triggered it.
Trump has threatened extra tariffs on imports of computer chips to the United States. This will heap pressure on Nvidia’s business, which depends on imported components mainly from Taiwan.
High-end versions of Nvidia’s chips also face US export restrictions to the major market of China. These restrictions are part of Washington’s efforts to slow its Asian adversary’s advancement in the strategic technology.
Against those headwinds, Nvidia stock is down more than 17 percent since Trump took office and DeepSeek, an AI model, debuted in January. Nvidia stock is one of the most traded on Wall Street.
China-based DeepSeek shook up the world of generative artificial intelligence. Its low-cost, high-performance model challenges the hegemony of OpenAI and other big-spending behemoths. Several countries have questioned DeepSeek’s handling of data. They believe the secretive company may be subject to the control of the Chinese government.
Tech giants building data centers to power artificial intelligence are driving hot demand for Nvidia’s high-end GPUs. Some say a low-cost option could weaken the Silicon Valley chip star’s business. But Nvidia and others argue that cheaper AI models will spur wider expansion. This will increase the need for computing and Nvidia’s technology.
“In essence, Nvidia’s chips remain the new oil or gold in this world for the tech ecosystem as there is only one chip in the world fueling this AI foundation… and it’s Nvidia,” said Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities.
Riding the AI wave, Nvidia has ramped up production of its top-of-the-line Blackwell processors for powering AI. It has logged billions in sales in just months.
On Tuesday, Huang presented the Blackwell Ultra, an upgraded version. Yet another line will supplant it in 2026, the Vera Rubin, a new GPU named after the US astronomer who discovered dark matter.
Nvidia reported that it finished last year with record high revenue of $130.5 billion. Demand from cloud computing giants including AWS and Microsoft drove that figure.
