Founder, CEO, and tireless Nvidia hype man Jensen Huang told attendees at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology conference on Thursday why his company’s AI domination — and revenues — will continue its record-breaking growth streak through the end of next year.
He can see the future.
There’s been endless hand-wringing over whether Nvidia’s party will end as it faces increasing competition for GPUs and AI chips from all directions: the hyperscalers (Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, each building their own) and the AI labs (Anthropic and OpenAI, which are building their own), as well as from newly public competitor Cerebras and startups such as Etched.
“Most people think Nvidia builds a chip. I mean, you need airplanes to ship what we build,” Huang said, adding that the company continues to battle a perception from its early days. Nvidia invented the GPU, which back then were largely sold to consumers to improve PC gaming. “One GPU now is not $399. It’s $8.5 million dollars. That’s one GPU, all connected with NVLink, 2 million parts, right? 250,000 kilowatts. That’s a GPU, and we ship thousands of them.”
He added that orders for just one product, a computer system that combines 36 Grace CPUs with 72 Blackwell GPUs, is currently experiencing 27% month-to-month sales growth.
Huang didn’t limit his bullish view to current sales though. He took the opportunity to reiterate Nvidia’s revenue outlook for next year — guidance the company provided last month when it reported yet another record-breaking revenue quarter. That’s when he first said revenue could grow by 70% next year.
“I think we could grow 70% year over year. We’re confident about that,” Huang said again on Thursday. Analysts expect the company to end its current fiscal year at about $400 billion in revenue. So 70% growth would mean around $680 billion next year.
Huang explained why he’s confident: His company is so embedded in every area of AI that he believes he can see the future.
“Nvidia runs every model. Every single lab can use us,” the CEO said, mentioning that this includes models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google, as well as open-weight offerings. “We are a foundational platform of the AI ecosystem, foundational platform of the AI industry.”
Nvidia’s fingers extend all the way from its suppliers, such as memory chip makers, to data center projects and startups.
“We’re tracking every single gigawatt of land, power, shell around the world. Literally everything on the planet,” he said. (“Shell” refers to the shell of a data center building before it is outfitted with computers).
“I mean, just think about all my partners. How many neoclouds are reporting back to us? How many OEMs are reporting back to us? How many clouds are reporting back to us? How many AI-native companies are reporting back to us? We’re working with everybody, and so we kind of know where everything is,” he said.
That comment led to inevitable questions about Nvidia’s so-called circular deals, in which it invests in companies that turn around and buy its wares. Such schemes famously contributed to the downfall of a previous generation of internet build-out suppliers like Lucent Technologies.
Huang had a simple, albeit cheeky, response. “Well, it’s not circular because we put a little bit of money in, and a lot of money comes back.” He went on to joke, “I look at the spreadsheet, we put in $1 and $100 comes back in. Is that circular? If that is, let’s do more of that.”
Quips aside, he insisted that before any of these companies gets an investment, Nvidia makes sure it has real contracts generating revenue from customers. All told, he said he’s seen $100 billion worth of such contracts, “I’m not taking any risks. … I need a sure thing.”
Time will tell whether Nvidia’s stronghold on AI can really persist long term. If there’s one golden rule of the tech industry, it’s that all big things get disrupted. Right now, even Huang admits that much of AI’s growth is coming from AI-native startups that are raising vast sums and spending most of that cash on their own AI use. As the AI industry matures, expect companies to become more efficient in how they use infrastructure and tokens.
But for now, Nvidia has its finger in every pie and sees another year of plenty in its future.
