Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was seen at the Nvidia GTC Artificial Intelligence Conference at the SAP Center in San Jose, California, clad in a black leather jacket and holding two motherboards. Months after the release of the highly sought-after superchip, one of the company’s major customers, Amazon Web Services, has changed its order to the new successor chip. AWS decided to halt its order for Nvidia Hopper chips in anticipation of the new blackwell processors, which were announced at Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference in March.
Jensen Huang referred to the Hopper chip as “The world’s most advanced GPU,” but also highlighted the need for larger GPUs to support today’s most powerful generative AI models. AWS, being the largest cloud computing provider globally, shifted its order completely to the Blackwell chips due to the short window between the Grace Hopper and Grace Blackwell releases. The exact price of the Blackwell order was not disclosed by Nvidia or Amazon.
Investors are expressing concerns about a potential slowdown in demand for Nvidia chips between the release of Hopper and the arrival of Blackwell shipments. Nvidia is expected to report its first-quarter earnings soon, with Wall Street increasing its expectations following the company’s strong fourth-quarter performance. Despite fears of a dip in demand, some analysts believe that Nvidia’s results and guidance will exceed expectations, with KeyBanc equity research analyst John Vinh predicting positive results in the coming quarters.
However, Morgan Stanley analysts have noted anxiety among investors about a potential pause in demand related to the Blackwell release. Citi analysts have also mentioned the possibility of a “lull” in demand for Nvidia chips. The situation is closely monitored as Nvidia navigates the transition between chip generations and addresses investor concerns.
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https://qz.com/amazon-nvidia-hopper-chip-blackwell-1851490624