On the week's agenda, amidst central bank decisions, investors have pinpointed an event that, before the artificial intelligence boom, would have federated only a microcosm. The Nvidia GTC conference, taking place from March 18 to 21 in San Jose, California, has become the high mass for AI developers.
The event kicks off with a keynote by Nvidia's charismatic CEO, Jensen Huang. This keynote, scheduled for today, could put some fuel back into the adventure, as AI-related action has been a bit stalled of late. The Nvidia GTC takes place from March 18 to 21, 2024 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center. It will bring together "the brightest minds in the technology industry", according to its promoter. The event alternates between training sessions, expert conferences and demonstrations.
Woodstock of AI
Bank of America has already dubbed it the "Woodstock of AI", to give it a slightly mystical, or mythical, dimension. The American bank is expecting five key elements at the conference:
The growing impact of generative AI, the omniverse and digital twins on a wide range of end markets
The opportunity to "re-architect" nearly $1 trillion to $2 trillion of global IT infrastructure with gas pedals, which would represent $250 billion to $500 billion in spending.
Pipeline update for gas pedals (B100, N100), Ethernet switches, DPUs and edge AI
Updated monetization through recurring software (AI Enterprise) and services (DGX cloud, automobiles, games)
Expanding enterprise use cases and demand for sovereign (countries, regions) and on-premise deployments.
BofA also hopes to gain insights into future energy consumption (will networks be able to handle the increase in demand), the impact of growing competition from custom chips and merchant silicon, and the sustainability of Nvidia's margins and growth, and the use of its mountain of cash.
On a more psychological level, this conference may serve to keep the AI flame alive with investors, who don't always know which way to turn. The latest contradictory financial performances from Oracle (better than expected) and Adobe (disappointing on the creative AI front) have helped to muddy the waters. While Nvidia still tops the charts (77% gains this year, 1970% over 5 years), the stock has lost 10% since its record high on March 8.
NVIDIA Corporation is the world leader in the design, development, and marketing of programmable graphics processors. The group also develops associated software. Net sales break down by family of products as follows:
- computing and networking solutions (55.9%): data center platforms and infrastructure, Ethernet interconnect solutions, high-performance computing solutions, platforms and solutions for autonomous and intelligent vehicles, solutions for enterprise artificial intelligence infrastructure, crypto-currency mining processors, embedded computer boards for robotics, teaching, learning and artificial intelligence development, etc.;
- graphics processors (44.1%): for PCs, game consoles, video game streaming platforms, workstations, etc. (GeForce, NVIDIA RTX, Quadro brands, etc.). The group also offers laptops, desktops, gaming computers, computer peripherals (monitors, mice, joysticks, remote controls, etc.), software for visual and virtual computing, platforms for automotive infotainment systems and cloud collaboration platforms.
Net sales break down by industry between data storage (55.6%), gaming (33.6%), professional visualization (5.7%), automotive (3.4%) and other (1.7%).
Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: the United States (30.7%), Taiwan (25.9%), China (21.5%) and other (21.9%).