Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on Thursday that countries around the world intend to build and run their own artificial intelligence infrastructure domestically, which will drive up demand for Nvidia products.Huang said in an interview that countries including India, Japan, France and Canada are talking about the importance of investing in "sovereign AI capabilities" and "their natural resources - data - should be refined and produced for their countries. The recognition of sovereign AI capabilities is global."
At the time of this interview, Huang was in Canada, itself home to many of the academic institutions that have made significant contributions to the breakthroughs in generative AI systems that power tools like OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT. He said the country now finds itself in increasing need of supercomputers, which are needed to capitalize on its academic output.
Huang has been talking for months about the need for countries and their companies to keep valuable data and intelligence local. This national approach to the AI boom will drive data center expansion, which will require Nvidia's expertise and hardware.
Nvidia's sales are estimated to have doubled this fiscal year, driven by AI spending from big customers such as Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Alphabet. Huang now wants to expand his customer base by convincing businesses and government agencies to build their own infrastructure.
He said: "This is the first time that because of the computer technology that generates artificial intelligence, it will affect every country. So some of the markets will be quite large and global."