Dell partnership key in push to expand AI, Nvidia CEO says

San Francisco – Nvidia chief executive officer Jensen Huang said the company’s partnership with Dell Technologies will spread artificial intelligence (AI) to a wider range of customers, helping businesses and organisations create their own “AI factories”.

“We want to bring this generative AI capability to every company in the world,” he said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Las Vegas, where Dell is holding a conference. “It’s not about just delivering a box – it’s about delivering an entire infrastructure. It’s an infrastructure that is insanely complicated.”

Dell is one of the largest providers of computing infrastructure to government agencies and businesses – a market that Nvidia does not directly serve. Although Nvidia’s sales have surged in the past year, it has mostly relied on a small group of customers for that growth: the data centre operators known as hyperscalers. Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Amazon.com and Alphabet are its biggest customers, according to data compiled by Bloomberg – although Dell is close behind.

Nvidia’s expansion plan hinges on getting agencies and businesses to develop their own AI capabilities, spurring demand for its products. For that, they will need the storage, networking and computing supplied by Dell, Mr Huang said.

That is why it is an essential partner, he added.

The CEO is pushing Nvidia deeper into software tools, computer design and AI models, helping spread the company’s technology into everything from drug discovery to shipbuilding.

Nvidia has succeeded because it prepared for the shift towards AI and has out-innovated all of its competitors, said Dell CEO Michael Dell, who also spoke on Bloomberg Television.

Nvidia’s stock, up more than 90 per cent in 2024, rose 2.8 per cent to US$951.07 in New York trading on May 20. Dell, which has also rallied about 90 per cent in 2024, was down 2.3 per cent at US$146.06.

Nvidia – the most valuable tech company after Microsoft and Apple – is slated to report its latest earnings on May 22. Analysts estimate that sales surged 243 per cent in the last quarter. The company’s revenue has grown so quickly that Nvidia now makes nearly as much in a quarter as it did annually just two years ago.

Dell, a top maker of personal computers, unveiled a new line of PCs on May 20 that are optimised for AI tasks. Nvidia, meanwhile, is the biggest seller of so-called AI accelerators – the processors that are key to the development of chatbots and other cutting-edge tools.

Nvidia currently sells graphics chips for PCs, but not the central processing units, or CPUs. Mr Huang declined to say whether the company will ultimately produce the CPU itself, a move that would put it in direct competition with Intel, Advanced Micro Devices and Qualcomm.

Before Mr Huang could discuss a potential move into that area, Mr Dell interrupted and said: “Come back next year.” BLOOMBERG