The demand for NVIDIA’s artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductors is rapidly expanding beyond major IT companies to automakers, including Tesla. This can be seen as a move to develop autonomous driving technology.
As a result, the competition for AI technology, which has been focused on the cloud sector, is expanding to the autonomous vehicle sector, projecting a larger benefit for related companies, including NVIDIA.
Yahoo Finance reported on the 23rd that Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA, has eased market concerns about a shrink in AI semiconductor sales. Strong demand for AI semiconductors is expected to continue until next year.
Huang told Yahoo Finance in an interview after NVIDIA’s earnings announcement and conference call that many customers are desperate to secure GPUs for data centers.
This is because there is widespread anxiety that if they cannot bring in NVIDIA GPU-based products in time, they could fall behind in the technology race.
NVIDIA is continuing its steep growth on the back of strong demand for AI semiconductors from these customers.
Sales for the first quarter (February-April) of NVIDIA’s 2025 fiscal year, which ended on April 28, were $26 billion, up 262% from the first quarter of the previous fiscal year, and net income per share was $6.12, up 461% over the same period.
CEO Jensen Huang said that the trend of NVIDIA AI semiconductor purchases is increasing, following Amazon, Microsoft Corporation, and Google, as well as Meta and Tesla.
He said, “Excluding the cloud, automobile-related companies are becoming the largest customers of NVIDIA products,” and “Someday, all vehicles will have autonomous driving features.”
Big tech companies, including Amazon, are aggressively increasing their investments in data servers using NVIDIA GPUs to expand the introduction of generative AI technology in their main businesses such as the cloud.
These large IT companies are virtually monopolizing the supply of NVIDIA AI semiconductors, resulting in a long-term supply shortage.
Significantly, Huang mentioned in an interview with Yahoo Finance that the demand for GPUs from automobile-related companies is also considerable.
This implies that the demand for NVIDIA AI semiconductors may spread beyond major IT companies to global automakers.
Promotional image of NVIDIA’s Grace Hopper GPU used in the field of AI.
Major automakers around the world are using AI semiconductors to analyze and learn from a large amount of driving data to commercialize their autonomous driving technology.
While the speed of autonomous driving technology development has been slower than expected and causing a pessimistic view of the related market, the situation could change significantly if NVIDIA AI semiconductors are introduced in earnest.
The AI GPUs recently introduced by NVIDIA have significantly improved performance compared to previous products, which is expected to contribute greatly to the advancement of autonomous driving technology.
Autonomous driving is evaluated as having growth potential comparable to generative AI-based chatbots and business solutions in the AI-related industry.
Therefore, if the investment in AI infrastructure by global automakers, as mentioned by NVIDIA’s CEO begins in earnest, then the growth of the related market, including semiconductors, will be much larger than it is now.
As automakers emerge as major buyers of AI semiconductors following large IT companies, this could positively affect industries closely related to memory semiconductors and servers.
If NVIDIA can supply enough AI semiconductors to these customers, the speed of autonomous driving technology development by automakers could gain more momentum.
Ultimately, the possibility of the autonomous driving era opening sooner as the automobile market arises.
Huang specifically mentioned that “Tesla is pulling away from other competitors in autonomous cars” and said that the supply of NVIDIA AI semiconductors has also been increasing.
He emphasized that the construction of NVIDIA GPU-based infrastructure in the automobile industry is accelerating and stressed that a business opportunity worth tens of billions of dollars has opened up this year.
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