. Nvidia has been steadily growing its AI-focused business over the past several years, but the explosion of interest and investment in the space over the last six months has turbocharged its sales.
Training AI models demands chips that have high amounts of memory, said Greg Osuri, the founder of Akash Networks, a marketplace for companies to sell access to their GPUs to other firms that need it. “Nvidia happens to be the only company that makes those chips.”For months, startups trying to get into the AI race have competed with Big Tech companies for Nvidia’s GPUs.
A set of eight of the most advanced chips can cost $300,000, Osuri said. Companies buy thousands of them.
Nvidia’s stock had already more than doubled this year as the AI boom took off, but the company blew past already-high expectations on Wednesday when it forecast that sales in the second quarter would be $11 billion, compared to the $7 billion that Wall Street analysts had forecast.Other companies are trying to find ways to run AI programs without using Nvidia’s chips, such as Microsoft partnering with Nvidia rival AMD to build new AI-focused chips, or Google’s Tensor Processing Units.