Nvidia stock may be downbut the AI chipmaker's CEO emphasized that demand for the company's products is stronger than ever — and that the high level of demand has it on edge.
“We have a lot of people on our shoulders and everyone is counting on us,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. said Wednesday at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia and Technology Conference.
Huang was responding to a question about his biggest concern from Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon. Nvidia is third most valuable company in the world, after Apple and Microsoft.
“The demand is so great that the distribution of our components, technology, infrastructure and software is really emotional for people,” Huang explained. “Because it directly affects their revenue, it directly affects their competitiveness.”
Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and Google are the biggest buyers of Nvidia's AI chips, which account for more than 40% of the company's revenue.
Nvidia shares rose 8% on Wednesday after Huang's remarks and other AI chip makers both Foxconn and TSMC also gained, up 5% and 4% respectively.
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia. Photo by Lachlan Cunningham/Getty Images
Nvidia has 70% to 95% of the AI chip market since June, though competition is growing. Nvidia's main rival, AMD, bought an AI startup for over half a million dollars in cash in July.
Huang justified the high price of Nvidia's servers on Wednesday saying that while the cost “could be several million dollars per rack,” AI has the potential to replace older systems and bring cost savings.
Can AI write better code than software engineers?
Huang also addressed the issue of AI replacing software engineers when it comes to writing code.
“I think the days of every line of code being written by software engineers are completely over,” Huang said. “The idea that each of our software engineers will essentially have accompanying digital engineers 24/7 — that's the future.”
Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garrman predicted the same future last month in a leaked conversation with employees. Garman said AI would change the job description of software engineers and make it possible for them not to code at all.
Related: Amazon Cloud CEO envisions a future where most software engineers don't code — and AI does instead
Marco Argenti, CIO of Goldman Sachs, said in April that technical skills alone could not handle AI. He encouraged future software engineers to take philosophy classes in addition to their standard subjects.