AI's Future and Nvidia's Fortunes Ride on the Race To Pack More Chips Into One Place

Leading technology companies are dramatically expanding their AI capabilities by building multibillion-dollar 'super clusters' packed with unprecedented numbers of Nvidia's AI processors. Elon Musk's xAI recently constructed Colossus, a supercomputer containing 100,000 Nvidia Hopper chips, while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg claims his company operates an even larger system for training advanced AI models. The push toward massive chip clusters has helped drive Nvidia's quarterly revenue from $7 billion to over $35 billion in two years, making it the world's most valuable public company.

WSJ adds: Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang said in a call with analysts following its earnings Wednesday that there was still plenty of room for so-called AI foundation models to improve with larger-scale computing setups. He predicted continued investment as the company transitions to its next-generation AI chips, called Blackwell, which are several times as powerful as its current chips.

Huang said that while the biggest clusters for training for giant AI models now top out at around 100,000 of Nvidia's current chips, 'the next generation starts at around 100,000 Blackwells. And so that gives you a sense of where the industry is moving.'

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