- Huang says “no active discussions” taking place to sell Blackwell chips to China
Nvidia is witnessing “very strong demand” for its latest Blackwell chips, CEO Jensen Huang said Saturday, underscoring not just the momentum behind the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) products, but also the crucial role of its manufacturing partners and suppliers.
At an event hosted by its longtime partner, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), Huang revealed that rising orders for Blackwell — Nvidia’s most advanced chip platform to date — have prompted a surge in the company’s appetite for wafers.
“Nvidia builds the GPU, but we also build the CPU, the networking, the switches, and so there are a lot of chips associated with Blackwell,” Huang said, highlighting the breadth of Nvidia’s technology stack.
TSMC CEO C.C. Wei, declining to disclose specific figures, confirmed that Huang’s requests for wafer supply were “confidential” but praised their ongoing collaboration.
“TSMC is doing a very good job supporting us on wafers,” Huang said. “Nvidia’s success would not be possible without TSMC.”
Growing pains
The strength of that partnership comes at a pivotal moment for Nvidia, which in October became the world’s first company to achieve a $5 trillion market valuation. In a nod to this achievement, TSMC’s Wei referred to Huang as the “five-trillion-dollar man.”
However, Huang also acknowledged the growing pains associated with such explosive growth, specifically the risk of supply shortages.
“Business is growing strongly, and there will be shortages of different things,” he explained. On the supply of memory chips — another critical component for AI hardware — Huang pointed to the company’s robust relationships with major suppliers SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron, all of whom have scaled up capacity to support Nvidia.
“They have all provided us with the most advanced chip samples,” he said, adding that any decisions around memory pricing remain up to the suppliers.
The upbeat outlook on AI demand is echoed by suppliers themselves. South Korea’s SK Hynix recently reported that it had sold out all chip production for next year and will increase investment, betting on a prolonged AI-driven “super cycle.” Samsung Electronics also disclosed ongoing talks to supply its newest high-bandwidth memory (HBM4) to Nvidia.
Despite the surging global demand, Huang asserted that there are “no active discussions” about selling Blackwell chips to China, citing ongoing US restrictions designed to prevent advanced AI hardware from reaching the Chinese military and tech industry.
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