Nvidia bets big on self-driving, big data
US chip giant Nvidia Corp announced new partnerships with Chinese companies such as JD Inc and Meituan Dianping on Wednesday as part of its broader effort to tap into opportunities created by self-driving and the big data industry in the nation.
Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, said it is partnering with Chinese e-commerce giant JD and Meituan Dianping, the country’s largest on-demand service platform, to develop unmanned delivery vehicles, based on its Jetson AGX Xavier chip series.
Huang said there is a huge potential for the application of artificial intelligence in China. The nation currently sees 8 billion visits to the doctor in its healthcare market, 3.22 trillion kilometers driven in transportation and $8 billion spent at the box office every year.
All these areas generate a huge amount of data and can be made more efficient and productive with the help of AI, Huang said.
Nvidia is the leading supplier of graphics processors, or chips that help enable high-definition images on computer games. As artificial intelligence requires greater computing power, the US company is leveraging the advantages of graphics chips to power data centers and help accelerate nascent technologies from voice and image recognition to selfdriving cars.
“But we are not just about hardware. The company is working on full-stack optimization, which also involves software, systems and algorithms,” Huang added.
Currently, the US company is seeing a strong momentum in its business in China, which now contributes more to its global revenue than its home turf. In its fiscal year 2018 that ended on Jan 28, Nvidia recorded $9.7 billion in revenue, with 20 percent of that from China, according to data compiled by the Wall Street Journal.
Raymond Teh, vice-president of Nvidia, said business growth in China is better than the global average, especially in data center businesses. Previously, Chinese clients compared its products with those of its rivals, but now Nvidia has won their trust.
Its clients include Baidu Inc and Tencent Holdings Ltd, which are deploying its latest processor HGX-2 in their cloud services. Also, Chinese tech giants including Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and Lenovo Group Ltd are building computers with the HGX-2 inside.
Roger Sheng, research director at consultancy Gartner Inc, said a string of Nvidia’s clients, including Alibaba, Huawei and even Google Inc, are working on AI chips themselves, which is putting a great deal of pressure on the company.
“But Nvidia has been investing in this market longer than anybody else. Such an edge is sustainable with its continuous input into research and development,” Sheng said.