Fast Facts
- Nvidia's Huang outlines how its Blackwell chips can change the world
- Huang explains how the new tech can revolutionize health care
- Is an Nvidia stock split on the way?
Jensen Huang is having a fantastic year so far.
Nvidia's president and CEO has steered the producer of artificial-intelligence chips well during the AI boom, leading to a stock surge of more than 85% and blowing past Amazon and Google — and it continues to climb.
Related: Move over, Elon Musk: Nvidia says 2024 is the year of the 'humanoid' robot
Nvidia kicked off its GTC 2024 conference on March 18, with Huang's keynote leaving attendees starry-eyed about the future, including the announcement of the next generation of ultra-high-end chips, called Blackwell.
Huang also found time to sit down with CNBC's Jim Cramer to discuss where the technology that his company creates could steer the world we live in.
"There's probably never been a technology company that has made a greater technology contribution to one of the most important industries in the world, and at such large scale," Huang said when Cramer asked the reason for Nvidia's meteoric success.
"We reinvented the computer as we know it. ... [We] reinvented it with this idea called accelerated computing," Huang continued.
"Now, you could have a computer that's 100 times faster, or 20 times more energy efficient, cost 20 times less, and to be able to solve problems at a scale that nobody's ever imagined — such that we helped solve artificial intelligence.
"And we're now on our way to making enormous progress in automation of intelligence — and as you know, intelligence is foundational to every single industry."
Huang held up a chip, saying, "In the last eight years, we improved performance per chip by 1,000 times."
Cramer turned the topic to health care, saying, "...[It] is very clear that beginning with Blackwell ... we'll go after Parkinson's, we'll go after schizophrenia, the things that no one can conquer — they're now within your tent, they're now possible."
Jensen said that the same way the new technology can be used to understand a novel, it can also be used to understand "the meaning of life."
"Once we can understand the meaning of life and be able to operate, use it in a computer, we can use that computer to simulate life. ... [That] computer does it so fast, we can explore the chemical space that is so much larger, explore the target protein space so much larger and so much more quickly. So whatever we decide to take to trials will have much higher possibility of actually passing a trial."
"But everything's on allocation! You say we can do that, but nobody has enough Nvidia product," Cramer said.
"We're at the beginning of this AI computing ramp. And we're in the beginning of the accelerated computing ramp. And it's gonna last a few years," Huang said. The company will "make sure that everybody gets their parts."
Cramer also inquired about the prospects that Nvidia would split its stock. "We'll think about it," Huang said.
