San Francisco – New York Times

In 2009, when Nvidia held its first developer conference, the event was like a science fair. Dozens of scholars who filled San Jose, California filled a hotel decorated with white poster boards for computer research. Chipmaker CEO Jensen Fan roamed the floor like a judge.

Nvidia's developer conferences are very different this year.

It is expected that more than 25,000 people will be attracted to the event known as the Nvidia GTC on Tuesday. The crowd fills the National Hockey League arena to hear Fan, who is called “I Yes,” about the future of artificial intelligence. Nvidia, the world's leading AI chip developer, wrapped San Jose in its company's neon green and black colours, closed the city and sent hotel prices that would rise as high as $1,800 a night.

It is expected that anyone in the industry will be present, including Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Technologies. DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and venture capital firm WNDRCO. Bill McDermott, Chief Executive Officer of ServiceNow.

“Nvidia makes chips, the oxygen for AI, so people are on their toes to learn about their latest and greatest things,” said Ali Farhadi, CEO of the Allen Institute of Artificial Intelligence. “The range of technology on display there is incredible.”

The transformation from academic events to the Super Bowl of AI (a weekly showcase of robots, large language models, and self-driving cars) represents the company's pervert. With AI becoming mainstream, customers have been seeking Nvidia's graphics processing unit. This is a powerful chip that helps you create technology. This has resulted in chipmakers being valued at nearly $3 trillion from $8 billion in 2009.

However, Nvidia's rise raised questions. Generated AI, which can answer questions, create images, and write code, is celebrated because it can improve your business and create trillions of dollars of economic value. Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta and others spend hundreds of millions of dollars to make their ideas come true.

But spending has sparked concerns across Wall Street and Silicon Valley about whether AI will make enough money to justify its incredible costs. The trajectory of this technology could also be overturned by newcomers like Deepseek, a small Chinese company that created cutting-edge AI systems with a small portion of the NVIDIA chips used by other companies. (Nvidia lost $600 billion worth of value in a day in January when investors realized what Deepseek had done.)

At Nvidia GTC, Huang tries to reassure people that AI will make its potential come to fruition, says Patrick Moorhead, founder of technology research firm Moor Insights & Strategy. Huang is expected to elaborate on how AI systems provide services people want to pay, like AI agents that can autonomously perform tasks like grocery shopping. He will also describe more futuristic uses of AI, such as the development of human-sized robots that can walk and pick things up.

Additionally, Huang is expected to talk about Nvidia's next-generation AI chip called Rubin.

Nvidia declined to comment on Huang's speech.

Rubin chips are essential for the company to stay on the forefront of AI as customers such as AMAMON, Google and Meta create their own AI chips. Nvidia's chips will also need to be changed as AI companies try to improve performance from the AI ​​model.

“If cloud companies stop spending, gravy trains will be screeched,” Moorehead said. “We have to reinforce our knowledge of what's going on,” Huang said.

Fan's ability to command the crowd is reminiscent of Apple's Steve Jobs. Apple co-founders spent days rehearsing speeches about their new iPod, iPhone or iPad ahead of the major company's events. He then went on stage with intense applause and made comments as if not explained.

Huang, 62, is also preparing in-depth for the Nvidia GTC. Two months before the event, he will work with the company's product division to identify what to present, said Greg Estes, Vice President of Corporate Marketing at Nvidia. Huang has also worked with his marketing team to develop slides and demonstrations to display on stage, create bullet points and see the facts he may cite.

But Huang never writes a speech, Estes said. He speaks instantly as he takes the stage in his trademark black leather jacket. A 90-minute scheduled speech can run for more than two hours.

“There can be mistakes and he'll say, 'You know, we don't rehearse,'” Estes said. “He's no joke. It's 'grab it and tear it'. ”

NVIDIA GTC was previously a GPU Technology Conference and was named after a graphics processing unit or GPU. Designed to encourage developers to use company chips, the event included a research summit that created a poster board detailing how scholars used it to compute research. Huang told participants what they did with tips and over the years I've heard they've used them to develop AI

David Cox, who presented his research at an early conference as a Harvard professor, said most attendees treated the scholars as “this strange little footnote.” However, he said Huang and other Nvidia executives took them seriously.

“It seemed like they knew we had something here,” said Cox, now vice president of AI models at IBM Research.

In 2014, Huang began dedicating most of his speeches at the conference to how NVIDIA chips can be used for machine learning and to render video game graphics using GPUs, which he has long been at the heart of the company's business.

“They said, 'What's this shiny new thing?'” said Naveen Rao, Databricks' chief AI officer. “We were like this: “No. This is a change in the ocean.”

Huang believes that AI will drive the next big boom in Tech and that GPUs are essential. In 2016, Nvidia developed a supercomputer packed with chips and distributed it to Openai, an AI lab. About six years later, Openai released ChatGpt Chatbot and unleashed AI Frenzy.

(New York Times sued Openai and its partner Microsoft over copyright infringement of news content related to AI Systems. Openai and Microsoft denied the claim.)

Nvidia's finances have been rising sharply since then. Founded in 1993, the company has increased annual profits by more than 1,500% over the two years last year, from $4.37 billion in 2023.

“Jensen has become the celebrity CEO he's always wanted,” Rao said. “He captured the AI, so it was an overnight success in making it.”