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Nvidia Corporation, the undisputed king of advanced chips that are now driving artificial intelligence (AI) applications, is releasing a new tool that lets owners of its latest series graphic cards run an AI-powered chatbot offline on a Windows PC.
“Rather than searching through notes or saved content, users can simply type queries,” Nvidia said in a blog post on Tuesday. “For example, one could ask, ‘What was the restaurant my partner recommended while in Las Vegas?’ and Chat with RTX will scan local files the user points it to and provide the answer with context.”
Nvidia’s chatbot push comes at a time when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is seeking trillions of dollars in investments to revamp the global semiconductor industry, The Wall Street Journal reported last week. Altman, who is behind the startup that launched ChatGPT, the fastest-growing consumer software application in history, has repeatedly voiced concern over the supply-and-demand problem with AI chips which, he has said, is limiting the growth of OpenAI.
Altman is now reportedly in talks with multiple investors for a project that could increase the global chip-building capacity, according to the WSJ report.
These announcements are being seen as indicating the direction the generative AI discourse could take going forward. This could also indicate a gradual blurring of the lines between the two most consequential players in the AI story, and the likely intersection of the interests of those who currently stand on opposite sides of the hardware-software divide.
Nvidia’s advantage
The gen AI boom has been the major reason for the soaring demand for specialised chips of the kind that Nvidia makes. Graphics processing units (GPUs) — the advanced chips that were earlier targeted at gaming applications but which are now driving AI applications — have the computing power and operational efficiency to run the calculations that allow companies working on large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT or Bard to chomp down on massive volumes of data.
Nvidia Corp has seen its valuation surge since the LLM boom, and is now swamped with orders that it is struggling to deliver. The pioneering graphics chipmaker is already one of the world’s most valuable companies, riding on its dominance in the gaming sector and now, the AI space and the potential that generative AI has to reshape the technology sector.
Analysts say Nvidia is ahead in the race for AI chips because of its proprietary software that makes it easier to leverage all of the GPU hardware features for AI applications. It also has the systems to back the processors up, and the software that runs all of it, making it a full stack solutions company.
Nvidia also offers an application programme interface (API) — which is a set of instructions that enable different applications to communicate with each other — called CUDA, which allows the creation of parallel programmes using GPUs, and are deployed in supercomputing sites around the world.
Altman’s opportunity
While Chat with RTX is seen as a very early-stage product that will evolve in due course, there is clearly a recognition of Nvidia’s indispensability to the AI future. Nvidia currently controls more than 80% of the AI chip market, and has a market cap of more than $1.70 trillion, significantly higher than storied Silicon Valley competitors such as Intel and AMD.
The buoyant demand for chips to power the generative AI rush also means that Nvidia will struggle to meet the GPU demand well into the foreseeable future. And that is one ostensible reason for Altman’s angst. That Nvidia is now a prominent investor, alongside Jeff Bezos, in Perplexity AI, one of the most promising GenAI startups that seek to challenge incumbents such as OpenAI, could be another factor.
Altman will need to raise between $5 trillion and $7 trillion for his project, the WSJ reported, citing a source.
On Wednesday, Altman posted on X that OpenAI believes the “world needs more AI infrastructure — fab capacity, energy, data centres, etc — than people are currently planning to build”. He also said that “building massive-scale AI infrastructure, and a resilient supply chain, is crucial to economic competitiveness”, and that OpenAI would “try to help”.
Altman has always been interested in chipmaking and, just prior to his controversial ouster as CEO of OpenAI, he was said to be spearheading a new chip venture code-named Tigris to directly take on Nvidia. Earlier in 2018, Altman had put in some of his own money to back an AI chip startup called Rain Neuromorphics.
