Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says ‘demand is just so strong’ for its hot AI chips

Customers buying Blackwell chips span the gamut of Big Tech, including Amazon Web Services, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Tesla, among others, Nvidia said in March.

Huang said Blackwell chips will start shipping in the second quarter, with production ramping up in the third quarter. Data centers should be up and running on the chips by the fourth quarter.

The demand isn’t just for Nvidia’s hotly anticipated Blackwell AI chip — first unveiled in March — but also for the company’s current Hopper chip.

With such high demand, Nvidia is going to produce new chip generations yearly, instead of every other year.

“I can announce that after Blackwell, there’s another chip. We’re on a one-year rhythm,” Huang said on the earnings call.

Revenue surge and a stock split

Huang’s comments came on the back of another blockbuster quarter for Nvidia. The Santa Clara, California-based company reported a 262% surge in first-quarter revenues from a year ago, to $26.04 billion — well over analyst estimates of $24.65 billion.

The results are not just a flash in the pan.

Nvidia’s chips have been in such demand that Huang had to assure stakeholders back in February that the company is allocating them “fairly.”

Nvidia’s share price has ballooned thanks to this demand, surging 150% in the past 12 months and 92% this year to date. On Wednesday, the stock breached $1,000 per share for the first time on the back of its gangbuster quarterly report.

On Wednesday, Nvidia announced a 10-for-1 stock split, effective next month, and upped its quarterly dividend by 150% from $0.04 to $0.10 per share.

“We are poised for our next wave of growth. The Blackwell platform is in full production and forms the foundation for trillion-parameter-scale generative AI,” said Huang on the earnings call.