Blackwell hiccups chip away at Nvidia’s margins

Nvidia has become the poster child for artificial intelligence (AI) and the computing revolution, with its technology increasingly favoured by automotive development teams seeking to infuse AI into existing products. Already one of the world’s most valuable and influential companies, Nvidia is promising a further step change with its new Blackwell architecture. Unveiled at the GTC conference in March 2024, this platform is positioned to support accelerated computing and generative AI, enabling AI training and real-time large language model inference for models scaling up to ten trillion parameters. Compared to Hopper, the previous generation of AI-optimised GPU, Blackwell is between two and 30 times faster and consumes a fraction of the power.

“The anticipation for Blackwell is incredible,” Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang told listeners in the Q2 earnings call on 28 August. “The Blackwell vision took nearly five years and seven one-of-a-kind chips to realise.”