Nvidia GTC AI conference: Everything investors need to know

An AI explosion has made Nvidia (NVDA) the third most valuable company in the world. The company's stock is up more than 500 percent since the start of 2023, and, this week, it’s looking to keep the hype going, showing off its latest innovations at its GTC conference in San Jose, California.

That includes the debut of its powerful Blackwell architecture and GB200 GPU, the successor to its popular H100 and H200 chips, as well as updates to its CUDA software platform.

"No conference in the world is there a greater assembly of researchers from such diverse fields of science," Nvidia Founder, President and CEO Jensen Huang said during his keynote address. "From climate tech, to radio sciences trying to figure out how to use AI to robotically control MIMOS for next generation 6G radios, robotic self-driving cars, even artificial intelligence."

But that’s not all the company is cooking up for the year ahead. Yahoo Finance's Daniel Howley spoke to top executives from Nvidia's various business segments including automotive, the enterprise, its Omniverse platform, and healthcare. Here is everything investors need to know.

Automotive (00:01:03)

On the automotive side where Nvidia works with automakers ranging from Mercedes-Benz (MBG.DE) and Hyundai (HYMTF) to Land Rover and BYD (BYDDY), the company is working generative AI technology into its self-driving car technology.

"We're seeing that kind of technology helping transform what will go inside vehicles, whether it's cars, trucks, or robotaxis, being able to have a natural conversation with your vehicle, but also it's really helping the development of autonomous vehicles as well," Nvidia Automotive Vice President Danny Shapiro said. "So generative AI can be used to assist simulation for testing and validating autonomous vehicles."

Enterprise (00:01:55)

Nvidia's enterprise business, which includes AI capabilities for the cloud, is also getting big updates for the year ahead.

"Of course, all our next generation of hardware will go to enterprise customers, either through our OEM partners like Dell (DELL), or Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), or will be available in the cloud where the enterprises do their work," Nvidia Enterprise Computing Vice President Manuvir Das explained. "But I think the other thing really is the announcement of software with NVIDIA NIM, which is a new way of putting together the AI models and software in such a way that it's really easy for enterprise companies to consume."

Omniverse (00:02:25)

The company's Omniverse division, which allows companies to build digital twins of real world locations and objects to do things like build factories and understand weather patterns, is similarly getting improvements.

"The next level is really about robotics, and robots that are intelligent and can operate inside the world around us. Omniverse is kind of our operating system for building the simulations and the simulation platform, bringing all the 3D worlds together," Nvidia Omniverse and Simulation Technology Vice President Rev Lebaredian said. "And the OVX computers are the special computers for running these simulations. AI and world simulation are kind of interlinked this way. You can't really have advanced AI without simulation."

Healthcare (00:03:09)

Generative AI is also working its way into Nvidia's medical fields.

"Just as you see the large language models being created, they're taking everything from video to image to text, and they're creating multimodal, very, very capable applications. We have a couple companies here and we're releasing some new technology that can do video language models," Nvidia Healthcare Vice President Kimberly Powell explained. "And so the aspect of doing multimodal is gonna be where we're headed after this first influx of amazing capability where we're kind of single modality. But being able to bring all these multimodal is going to unlock a ton of understanding."

Expectations for Nvidia are exceedingly high, and the company will need to show Wall Street that its latest products have what it takes to keep that momentum going. Yahoo Finance will be there to see it all.

Video Transcript

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DANIEL HOWLEY: An AI explosion has made Nvidia the third most valuable company in the world. Its share prices are up some 500% since the start of 2023, and it's hoping to keep that hype rolling here in San Jose at its GTC conference. That includes debuting its new Blackwell GPU architecture as well as its GB200 superchip and updates to its CUDA software.

JENSEN HUANG: No conference in the world is there a greater assembly of researchers from such diverse fields of science. From climate tech to radio sciences, trying to figure out how to use AI to robotically control MIMOS for next-generation 6G radios, robotic self-driving cars, even artificial intelligence.

DANIEL HOWLEY: But that's not all the company is cooking up for the year ahead. Nvidia is also debuting a number of updates for its various business segments, including automotive, the enterprise, its Omniverse platform, and healthcare. On the automotive side, where Nvidia works with automakers ranging from Mercedes-Benz and Hyundai to Land Rover and BYD, the company is working generative AI technology into its self-driving car technology.

DANNY SHAPIRO: We're seeing that kind of technology helping transform what will go inside vehicles, whether it's cars or trucks, or robotaxis, being able to have a natural conversation with your vehicle, but also it's really helping the development of autonomous vehicles as well. So a generative AI can be used to assist simulation for testing and validating autonomous vehicles. Imagine a-- an automated car and there's cameras on it that are understanding the environment. Well, what we can do is generative AI can take that video feed and understand it, communicate it to you in real time, and alert you to the fact that maybe somebody is jaywalking.

DANIEL HOWLEY: Nvidia's enterprise business, which includes AI capabilities for the cloud, is also getting big updates for the year ahead.

MANUVIR DAS: Of course, all our next generation of hardware will go to enterprise customers, either through our OEM partners like a Dell or HP, or will be available in the cloud, where the enterprises do their work. But I think the other thing really is announcement of software with NVIDIA NIM, which is a new way of putting together the AI models and software in such a way that it's really easy for enterprise companies to consume.

DANIEL HOWLEY: The company's Omniverse division, which allows companies to build digital twins of real-world locations and objects to do things like build factories and understand weather patterns, is similarly getting improvements.

REV LEBAREDIAN: For us to get to the next level of AI? The next level is really about robotics and robots that are intelligent and can operate inside the world around us. Omniverse is kind of our operating system for building the simulations and the simulation platform, bringing all the 3D worlds together. So you can do that. And the OVX computers are the special computers for running these simulations. AI and world simulation are kind of interlinked this way. You can't really have advanced AI without simulation.

DANIEL HOWLEY: Generative AI is also working its way into Nvidia's medical fields.

KIMBERLY POWELL: Just as you see the large language models being created, they're taking everything from video to image to text, and they're creating multimodal, very, very capable applications. We're-- We have a couple of companies here, and we're releasing some new technology that can do video language models. And so the aspect of doing multimodal is going to be where we're headed after this first influx of amazing capability where we're kind of single modality. But being able to bring all these multimodal is going to unlock a ton of understanding.

DANIEL HOWLEY: Expectations for Nvidia are exceedingly high, and the company will need to show Wall Street that its latest products have what it takes to keep that momentum going. And Yahoo Finance will be there to see it all.

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