Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang has declared, “We are at the beginning of a new industrial revolution” due to the surging corporate demand for artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
The quasi-celebrity billionaire, notorious for his signature leather jacket, said the work by companies like OpenAI and Google in developing advanced AI systems known as frontier models is “really, really important.” But he went on to say that the ability to manufacture intelligence at scale is new.
“That’s one of the reasons why I’m almost certain now, as we’re building these factories everywhere for all these different initiatives, that we’re the beginning of the new industrial approach,” he explained, speaking at the Databricks data and AI summit in San Francisco on Wednesday.
“Instead of generating electricity, we’re generating intelligence,” and eventually “every one of us will become intelligence manufacturers,” Huang added.
He is particularly excited about the use of AI in customer services because “every company has it, every single industry has it”. Huang predicted that data growth could multiply a hundredfold every five years due to customer service applications.
On Monday, Nvidia’s shares began trading after a 10-for-1 stock split based on Friday’s closing price of $1,210. This does not affect the company’s valuation or performance but it makes the stock more accessible to retail investors by lowering the price per share.
The Nasdaq-listed company with a market cap of $3.08t (£2.4t) has had an incredible run of 200 per cent over the past year, driven by the increasing business demand for its GPUs, which are crucial for powering AI models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.
Thanks to its success, Nvidia recently reported $26bn in revenue for the first quarter of fiscal year 2025, a 262 per cent increase from the previous year. Net profit soared to nearly $15bn, up from $2bn a year ago.
At the time of the results, Huang said: “Companies and countries are partnering with Nvidia…to produce a new commodity: artificial intelligence.”
Nvidia has partnered with many tech companies, such as Amazon, Shopify and Slack, as well as government agencies.
On Tuesday, it extended a partnership with Databricks, a US company that helps businesses create AI models using their private data sets. It aims to reduce costs for its clients, including Burberry, Rolls Royce and Shell.