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From VentureBeat, August 17:
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang proudly proclaimed on an analyst earnings call this week that artificial intelligence is the “single most powerful force of our time.”
Nvidia reported Q2 earnings and revenues that beat analysts’ expectations as demand for graphics and artificial intelligence chips picked up. After the earnings call, I interviewed Huang about the company’s progress.
During the analyst call, he said there are more than 4,000 AI startups working with the company — as compared to 2,000 AI startups in April 2017. In our interview, Huang said the actual number of AI startups Nvidia is tracking is closer to 4,500.
He said gaming is driving sales for now, but AI will pick up in various waves over time. Ultimately, the $100 trillion transportation industry will be transformed by AI via autonomous vehicles. Nvidia is working with companies like Volvo on development projects that could ultimately generate a lot of revenue.
“The work we are doing is important, impactful, and incredibly fun,” Huang said. “We’re just grateful there is so much of it.”
Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
VentureBeat: Did you know that VentureBeat’s specialties these days are gaming and AI?....MUCH MORE
Jensen Huang: [laughs] Is that right?
VentureBeat: Just like you guys. All we have to do is cover Nvidia.
Huang: Smart people focus on the right things.
VentureBeat: It was an interesting call. You had a good quarter. When I wrote a story on you guys in April 2017, you said there were 2,000 AI startups. Now we’re at 4,000?
Huang: Yeah, there’s probably something like — our latest guess is about 4,500. We’re tracking about 4,500.
VentureBeat: Is this just the companies that you’re interacting with, then?
Huang: Yeah. There are health care companies, financial service companies, transportation companies, manufacturing companies, consumer internet companies.
VentureBeat: It proves what you were saying on the call about the impact of AI, then?
Huang: Right. There are very few industries that I know of — I mean, there are companies in fashion, in cosmetics. They’re developing AI models and training them in the cloud in the beginning. If they’re successful, they build their own datacenters and develop the software in their own datacenter, like Uber does. I just can’t imagine that this doesn’t become a large industry, because of the things you and I both know. This is a technology that has a great deal of potential. It can solve some really interesting problems.
VentureBeat: When do you see revenues that are identifiable as AI-derived surpassing gaming at Nvidia?
Huang: That’s a hard question, partly because gaming is a large market. One of the things I’m excited about is the observation that gamers are creators and creators are gamers too. We used to think of creators as workstation customers and think of gamers as consumers. But there are many consumers who do 3D art and video editing. We created a platform for them called RTX Studio. I’m delighted by that. The response from creators has been fantastic....
