The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.
(Questions from industry analysts are provided in full, but answers are omitted - download the transcript to see the full question-and-answer session)
Question: Harlan Sur - J.P. Morgan Securities LLC - Analyst
: <_ALACRA_META_ABSTRACT>No, that was a great overview. I appreciate that. I want to -- my first few questions are going to be on some of the things that
you just highlighted from the keynote. The first thing is -- and we've heard this from enthusiast-class gamers. Obviously, a very
strong lineup of gaming solutions with RTX 50-series announcement. As you mentioned, 50%, 100% better performance versus
Question: Harlan Sur - J.P. Morgan Securities LLC - Analyst
: Got it. And then, as you mentioned, and something that Jensen and you have brought up a few times, actually doing earnings
and last night as well, is agentic AI. Agentic AI, as you mentioned, represents the next generation of artificial intelligence. It
enables systems to perform complex tasks autonomously.
As Jensen said, perceive, reason, plan, act. And the deployment of agentic AI in sectors like customer service, content creation,
software engineering, healthcare, can lead to increased efficiencies, improved outcomes. I mean, NVIDIA blueprints, as you
mentioned, plays a crucial role in accelerating the adoption of agentic AI by providing reference workflows tailored to specific
use cases.
How significant is agentic AI? My assumption is this is very important for enterprise. How important is it in driving higher
inferencing adoption and software uptake amongst your enterprise customers?
Question: Harlan Sur - J.P. Morgan Securities LLC - Analyst
: That's great. Let's take a step back and let's review calendar '24, right? If you hit your guidance this quarter, revenue for
calendar '24 is expected to more than double, much of which is a reflection of the team's strong product cycles combined
with the aggressive build-out of GenAI.
As we look into calendar '25, consensus has you -- the team up another 50%, 60% revenue growth for your fiscal '26. Help
us understand the demand trends and product cycles that will drive your fiscal '26. And how should we think about the team's
longer-term revenue growth profile?
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JANUARY 07, 2025 / 4:00PM, JPM.N - NVIDIA Corp CES Fireside Chat Hosted by JPMorgan
Question: Harlan Sur - J.P. Morgan Securities LLC - Analyst
: And so that's a good segue. I want to spend a little bit of time on the Data Center business. And with the aggressive annual
product cadence within your Data Center business, the manufacturing complexity of these Blackwell-based systems and
solutions and just the sheer number of SKUs supported are driving an increasingly supply chain and value chain sort of
complexity dynamic.
And it's not a surprise. I mean, as you continue to help your customers get to market faster with more system-level solutions,
with more SKUs, I would assume there would be challenges given this deployment model.
And to that notion, I mean, there have been concerns on the production of GB200 racks driven by potential supply challenges
in non-GPU components, across areas such as power management chips or what we call PMICs, or the NVSwitch boards that
we hear about, cable cartridges and liquid-to-air sidecars. And so, near term, I mean, are these potential issues impacting the
GB200, B100, B200 shipment profile here in Q4 or first half of the year? And how is the team helping to alleviate the supply
chain and value chain bottlenecks for your customers?
Question: Harlan Sur - J.P. Morgan Securities LLC - Analyst
: Yeah. And you brought up a good point, which is -- and we'll get to it in a minute. But there's standing up these very complex
compute-based systems with your cloud and hyperscale customers, and the challenges associated with making sure that the
data center architecture and infrastructure is in place. And it sounds like, based on your last response, that you are working
with your customers and partners very closely here.
I know that on the earnings call, the team did talk about demand exceeding your supply capability. Is that still the case? Is
supply -- is demand still outstripping supply? What are the particular, let's say, components? Is it [CoLOS]? Is it HBM? Is it other
types of components that are -- continue to be in tight supply? And the key question is, when does the team expect a lot of
these supply constraints to ease?
Question: Harlan Sur - J.P. Morgan Securities LLC - Analyst
: Does that -- as your supply capability continues to improve, you continue to unlock that. In a profile where demand is extremely
strong, would that imply that the team's Data Center business can grow sequentially every single quarter through this fiscal
year, you think?
Question: Harlan Sur - J.P. Morgan Securities LLC - Analyst
: Your next-generation Blackwell Ultra is set to launch in late '25. And in line with the team's aggressive annual product cadence,
help us understand the decision, purchasing dynamics with your customers, given that you'll still be ramping prior-generation
Blackwell solution, but at the same time, that you'll be rolling out Blackwell Ultra. How do you, and your customers, and the
supply chain, I mean, manage the simultaneous ramp of two product families?
Question: Harlan Sur - J.P. Morgan Securities LLC - Analyst
: There's been -- this is the dynamic that was occurring, and I know you got some questions on this during the earnings call.
But there's been some concerns about performance scaling limits on some of these foundational AI models, primarily focused
on the potential for diminishing returns on the pretraining phase.
One approach here is to augment real-world data with synthetic data. There's also the emergence of new scaling models
primarily around post-training optimization and also around inferencing. Jensen talked a little bit about that on the earnings
call, this whole notion of test time, compute inferencing. So how does the NVIDIA team think about the continued scaling of
models and the requirements for more GPU compute capability going forward?
Question: Harlan Sur - J.P. Morgan Securities LLC - Analyst
: We've -- maybe more near term, many of our client conversations focus on the sustainability of demand as we move into
calendar '26, i.e., cloud and hyperscaler CapEx spending. And the market is always concerned for the potential that there will
be some capacity digestion on new product cycles, all your cloud and hyperscaler customers going to monetize their AI
investments.
I mean, looking at it from NVIDIA's perspective, obviously, your customers are -- you're in discussion for multiple generations
over multiple years. You understand their initiative. So how should we think about the future spending and the potential for
things like digestion cycles and so on?
Question: Harlan Sur - J.P. Morgan Securities LLC - Analyst
: Yeah, we -- one of the things I feel pretty confident about in terms of sustainability of spend is your enterprise-focused
customers, vertical markets, maybe sovereign AI. We recently ran a CIO survey with the world's largest global corporations
in enterprise. And the survey was insightful in that CIOs, on average, estimated that their current annual spend on AI was
about 5% of their total IT spending budgets, but that was expected to grow to 15% to 20% of their budgets in three years.
So in dollar spending terms, that's like 50 -- 60% CAGR over the next three years, so a very strong growth profile, clearly
implying that this is not a segment that is probably going to take the pedal off the metal any time soon as it relates to spend.
So the question here is, what's the anticipated contribution of enterprise vertical markets as a percent of your total Data Center
businesses this year?
I know last night, for example, Jensen mentioned that automotive vertical within Data Center is already, I think, $2.5 billion,
$3 billion in revenues this year. I know Kimberly, Head of your Healthcare, was telling us beginning of last year, healthcare
was driving closer to $1 billion per year type run rate.
And then additionally, we continue to hear that the majority of all large corporate proprietary data still resides on-prem, and
customers want to keep it on-prem, which fits perfectly with your AI enterprise, software suite, and NVIDIA NIM services. So
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JANUARY 07, 2025 / 4:00PM, JPM.N - NVIDIA Corp CES Fireside Chat Hosted by JPMorgan
if you can just give us a read on engagement activity level around enterprise, AI, and around NIM. But more importantly, what
is the contribution of enterprise, vertical markets, and sovereign as a percent of your total Data Center business this year?
Question: Harlan Sur - J.P. Morgan Securities LLC - Analyst
: Yeah, absolutely. We've seen, over the past 12 to 18 months, hyperscalers shifting some of their compute from merchant GPUs
like NVIDIA to deploying their own custom solutions. And all of your cloud and hyperscalers that are ramping or have plans
to ramp their internal solutions over the next several years. How do you view this sort of evolving market?
I don't think it's a winner-takes-all scenario. I do think that it's a combination of a mix-and-match approach given your -- the
different workloads that your customers have to support or are developing internally. But how does the NVIDIA team think
about the emergence and deployment of custom ASICs by some of your customers who, I think, for the foreseeable future,
are going to continue to buy a lot of NVIDIA GPUs, but are also going to be developing and purchasing their own custom ASIC
solutions?
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JANUARY 07, 2025 / 4:00PM, JPM.N - NVIDIA Corp CES Fireside Chat Hosted by JPMorgan
Question: Harlan Sur - J.P. Morgan Securities LLC - Analyst
: Let's talk about your networking franchise. Your networking revenues are up 7x, 7x from 2020 when you acquired Mellanox.
That's a 70% CAGR. I mean, phenomenal growth obviously led by the team's InfiniBand leadership, but now expanding
aggressively into Ethernet networking.
You've talked about a multibillion-dollar pipeline in your Spectrum-X Ethernet portfolio. You still have the X800 ramp ahead
of you. Can you just give us a rough sense on your networking business mix today, InfiniBand versus Ethernet?
And what's the timing of the Quantum/Spectrum-X800 ramp, right? We hear that there's very strong demand for that platform.
But it seems like it's one to two quarters behind Blackwell. Wanted to get your sense on timing relative to the Blackwell ramp.
Question: Harlan Sur - J.P. Morgan Securities LLC - Analyst
: Yeah. And that's exactly what we hear from your customers as well. It's not just about the compute. In order to develop the
best highest performance, most optimized solution, driving the best TCO, it's a combination of optimizing the compute with
the networking, with the memory, and the storage, so totally agree with you there.
But the last couple of minutes that we have left, I did want to touch on one thing, which is moving over to gaming and consumer
side of your business, it's 8% to 10% of your overall business. It's back above $3 billion per quarter. The proliferation of AI at
the edge represents a unique opportunity to expand your installed base beyond gaming and into consumer PCs to take
advantage of the whole AI PC potential upgrade cycle that's still in front of the industry.
How is the team approaching this opportunity? What initiatives are you undertaking to capitalize on it? I know Jensen unveiled
and you mentioned the two Project DIGITS last night, for example, which I would call a souped-up AI supercomputing PC. Can
the NVIDIA team take Project DIGITS, scale it down to a GPU/ARM-based CPU for AI personal computing form factors optimized
to run Windows-based consumer AI applications, and in what time period?
Question: Harlan Sur - J.P. Morgan Securities LLC - Analyst
: Great. Well, Colette, I want to thank you for supporting our CES events these past few years. I look forward to continuing to
monitor the progress of the team, which looks to be another strong year for NVIDIA. So thank you for all the support, and look
forward to a great year from NVIDIA. Thank you very much.
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