Nvidia, a world leader in producing “smart chips,” has unveiled its latest product, the B200 Blackwell chip, which the company says can perform some tasks 30 times faster than its predecessor.
Nvidia has an 80% share of the AI chip market and is hoping to extend its dominance. The company is the third-most valuable company in the U.S., behind Microsoft and Apple. Its stock has risen 240% in the past year, and its market value hit $2 trillion last month.
Nvidia plans for its major customers, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, to use the company’s new flagship chip in cloud computing services and their own AI offerings.
Chips for robots and cars
The company’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, detailed the new plans at its annual developer conference. They include a new line of chips for cars that can run chatbots inside the vehicle. The company said they will be used by Chinese electric vehicle makers BYD and Xpeng.
Huang also introduced a new series of chips for creating humanoid robots, inviting several robots to join him on stage.
Founded in 1993, Nvidia was originally known for making computer chips that processed graphics, especially for video games. Long before the AI revolution, it began adding features to its chips that it said would help with machine learning, an investment that helped it gain market share.
It is now seen as a key company to watch to see how quickly AI-based technology spreads across the business world. But competition is growing from rivals like AMD and Intel.