NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has said that there is a mad scramble for companies to get their hands on the limited supply of Blackwell AI GPUs, and that is frustrating some companies, while raising tensions with others.
Jensen Huang was recently speaking to the audience at the Goldman Sachs Group Inc. technology conference in San Francisco, where he said: "The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most. We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It's tense. We're trying to do the best we can".
He continued, adding that TSMC's "agility and their capability to respond to our needs is just incredible" said Jensen, adding: "And so we use them because they're great, but if necessary, of course, we can always bring up others".
NVIDIA's new Blackwell B200 AI GPUs have been going through some troubles before their launch, as well as limited supplies of GB200 AI servers and B200 AI GPUs in Q4 2024, before the big flood of Blackwell begins. Oracle recently laid out plans of spending over $100B in new data centers, while teasing a 130,000+ Blackwell AI GPU supercluster, which I'm sure is making Jensen smile ear-to-ear.
- Read more: NVIDIA's suppliers in Taiwan prep for GB200 NVL36 AI servers in September, NVL72 in October
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- Read more: Analyst: NVIDIA has 'effectively canceled' B100 AI GPU over design flaw: B200A to replace it
- Read more: NVIDIA to make $210 billion revenue from selling its Blackwell GB200 AI servers in 2025 alone
- Read more: NVIDIA's new GB200 Superchip costs up to $70,000: full B200 NVL72 AI server costs $3 million
NVIDIA has been relying on TSMC for its success, making all of its recent generations of GPUs at Taiwanese semiconductor leader. Huang did talk about the geopolitical risks involved in Taiwan (China) and that China sees TSMC's home island of Taiwan as a "rogue province" and that has concerns raised that it might try to reclaim the territory.
I wrote a story back in March 2024 that China was "on track to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2024" said a top US admiral under a testimony at the time. If this happened it wouldn't just affect TSMC and NVIDIA, but every TSMC customer: Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, Apple, and every one of their partners, and the entire world.
However, companies like NVIDIA and their mega-success is going to have to be concerned about the happenings in Taiwan, especially if an invasion from China were to occur. The flow and supply of NVIDIA's entire stack of products, with hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue flushed down the toilet if those devastating events were to occur.