Monday, December 23, 2024

Nvidia says its Blackwell AI chip is ‘full steam’ ahead

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Nvidia has become the world’s most valuable company on the back of AI chips, passing Microsoft and Apple along the way, and in today’s Q3 2025 earnings, the company suggested its record AI revenue and profits are only the beginning.

While The Information recently reported that its new flagship Blackwell AI servers might have cooling issues, the company didn’t address that on today’s call — instead, Nvidia assured investors that Blackwell is in “full production,” is “full steam” ahead, and that the company would continue to deliver more of the chips each quarter from here on out.

Nvidia has already shipped 13,000 Blackwell samples to its customers this quarter, said CFO Colette Kress, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang claimed Blackwell’s success can already be measured in the billions as a result. “As you can see from all the systems being stood up, Blackwell is in great shape,” Huang told investors.

While Nvidia has long been known as a graphics and gaming company, pioneering the GPU, its data center fortunes have now outstripped its other businesses by an order of magnitude. Gaming is now merely a $2-3 billion business each quarter for Nvidia, but its AI-infused data centers raked in $30.7 billion this past quarter, making up the vast majority of its $35 billion in quarterly earnings.

Much of that is pure profit for Nvidia, too: $14.8 billion in Q1, $16.6 billion in Q2, and now a profit of $19.3 billion in Q3. (Microsoft and Apple made $24.7 billion and $21.4 billion in profit, respectively, this past quarter, though.)

Practically, that means there’s substantial overlap between each new generation of chips as businesses order them and stick them into data centers. Though Blackwell is Nvidia’s latest and greatest, Nvidia says today that the H200 it announced last year is actually now the fastest-selling product it’s ever made, growing to multiple billions of dollars’ worth this past quarter.

Nvidia’s H100 was its original winning AI product, though it took longer to see its current success; Huang says the company expects demand for its H-series chips to continue through most of next year.

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