On Monday (December 4th) local time, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang stated that although there is extremely high market demand, NVIDIA will still prioritize considering Japan’s demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips.
Huang met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo on Monday. Japan is vigorously supporting the chip industry with the goal of restoring its position as a major semiconductor supplier and catching up with AI technology development. Currently, NVIDIA dominates the AI chip market.
Less than two weeks ago, Japan passed an additional budget to launch approximately 2 trillion yen (equivalent to $13.6 billion) in chip investments, and it is expected that some of these funds will be used to support TSMC and chip foundry company Rapidus. Rapidus plans to manufacture cutting-edge chips in Hokkaido.
Huang told the media: “The demand is very high, but I promised the Prime Minister that we will do our best to prioritize Japan’s demand for graphics processing units (GPUs).”
Huang said: “Japan now has started developing and nurturing its own semiconductor industry capable of producing GPUs.” He added: “Countries like Japan are realizing that you need your own AI factories to manufacture your own AI.”
Huang also revealed that NVIDIA plans to collaborate with Japanese companies including SoftBank on research and development of generative AI.
With the wave of AI brought about by ChatGPT, NVIDIA’s revenue has soared significantly this year, and its stock price has more than doubled.
According to last month’s financial report, NVIDIA’s third-quarter revenue was $18.12 billion, a year-on-year increase of 206%; net profit was $9.243 billion, a year-on-year increase of 1259%. In terms of performance guidance, NVIDIA expects fourth-quarter revenue to be $20 billion with a fluctuation range of plus or minus 2%, equivalent to a range between $19.6 billion and $20.4 billion.
During the financial report conference call, NVIDIA stated that due to the impact of tightened US export controls on AI, data center revenue from China and other affected countries and regions will significantly decline in the fourth quarter; it is evident that these controls have a negative impact on NVIDIA’s business in China, which will persist in the long term. It was reported that data center revenue from China and other regions accounted for approximately 20%-25% in the second quarter.