Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang expects the rollout of its next-gen Blackwell chips to be the company’s biggest revenue driver soon.
“We’re racing to get Blackwells into every data center in the world,” Huang said in an interview with Yahoo Finance from the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas on Tuesday.
Huang added that he expects Blackwell revenues to eclipse sales of Nvidia’s prior-generation Hopper chips “early this year.”
Analysts expect Nvidia’s data center business to continue its blockbuster growth thanks to the rollout of its Blackwell lineup. In its most recent quarter, nearly 90% of its revenues came from this segment.
The company is currently ramping up production of its high-powered Blackwell chip for AI applications and expects to ship several billion dollars worth of the hardware in the fourth quarter alone, with far more expected throughout the year ahead. Fourth quarter revenue at Nvidia tallied $35.1 billion.
On Monday, Huang spent much of his CES keynote address talking about the opportunity in robotics and self-driving cars, which he expects will be one of the biggest computing industries in the world.
“We’ve been working on self-driving cars now for some time,” Huang said, noting that Nvidia’s technology for autonomous driving is already set to generate $5 billion in annual sales for the AI chipmaker.
“If it’s already a $5 billion business for us, imagine how big it’s going to be when we have 100 million new [self-driving] cars per year,” Huang added. “This is likely going to be one of the largest robotics industries in the world and one of the largest computing industries in the world.”
On Monday, Huang unveiled the company’s Cosmos platform for developers to simulate their self-driving vehicle software, its latest push into the auto market.
The executive also unveiled Nvidia’s partnerships with Toyota (TM) and autonomous trucking company Aurora Innovation (AUR), which will use its specialized chips for self-driving vehicle systems. Its newest DRIVE Thor chip for autonomous driving is based on the architecture for its latest Blackwell AI chips.
Aurora stock rose more than 30% following the news on Tuesday. Nvidia stock, which opened at a record high on Tuesday, was down more than 5% in afternoon trade.
Nvidia’s Automotive and Robotics segments currently make up a relatively small portion of its overall revenue. In Q3, the division brought in $449 million compared to its Data Center business, which brought in $30.8 billion of its $35.1 billion in total revenue.