Nvidia is one of the world’s biggest computer chip companies, best known for its line of graphics processing units or GPUs. Although the firm had its start in the world of consumer gaming, in recent years it’s grown into a true tech titan with diverse investments in self-driving cars, cloud computing, supercomputing, and artificial intelligence. The parallel processing power of Nvidia’s GPUs has proven to be particularly good at machine learning tasks, and its chips are in high demand not only from AI researchers but any business with an interest in artificial intelligence. From 2015 onwards, Nvidia’s share price grew sharply, allowing the company to make some key acquisitions, including UK chip designer ARM, which it announced it would purchase in September 2020 for $40 billion. Nvidia was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, who is currently the firm’s CEO. Known for his leather jackets and upbeat corporate presentations, Huang is a familiar figure to anyone interested in tech.
7
Verge Score
The next-gen GPU battle begins with Nvidia alone at the top.
Nvidia’s upcoming RTX 5090 launch on January 30th might be met with limited stock, according to some system builders and retailers. PowerGPU is warning that the RTX 5090 will have poor availability, and others are warning that some cards might not arrive until February.
Nvidia says more than 80 percent of RTX GPU owners activate its DLSS upscaling. That includes owners of RTX 20-series GPUs on up to RTX 40-series cards. Nvidia originally launched DLSS with its RTX 20-series GPUs in 2018, and now it’s about to launch DLSS 4 with the RTX 50-series later this month. DLSS 4 is a big upgrade with neural rendering capabilities and Multi Frame Generation.
The AI boom means most of these highly sought-after parts wind up in server farms, so it’s rare to see one ourselves — but AMD and Nvidia showed off a few at CES 2025. Here’s AMD’s MI325X, and then what appears to be Nvidia’s GB200 NVL72, with potentially lots of its new Blackwell AI chips inside.
Samsung’s estimated Q4 earnings are way down on both Q3 and analyst estimates. Part of the problem? It can’t develop new AI memory chips for Nvidia fast enough, but Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has faith:
“They have to engineer a new design ... But they can do it. They are working very fast. They’re very committed to do it.”
“I would be delighted to go see him and congratulate him and do everything we can to help this administration succeed,” Huang told Bloomberg.
Maybe the president-elect is waiting for his seven-figure donation, per Tim Cook, Sam Altman, Zuck, and Bezos — a bargain compared to the $259 million contributed by Musk.
It will have to be Nvidia’s Founder’s Edition model, according to an update to Nvidia’s small form factor PC compatibility list spotted by VideoCardz.
The China-only chip comes with 2,375 AI TOPS, compared to the 3,352 on the RTX 5090 that will launch elsewhere, as pointed out by Tom’s Hardware. US export rules prevent chipmakers like Nvidia from selling high-powered chips to China.
Despite these requirements, it seems some of the company’s advanced chips have made their way into China through smuggling, according to The Information.
This is Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s introduction of Project Digits, a GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip-powered system with 128GB of RAM that costs about $3,000 and can run sophisticated AI models in a package small enough to sit on your desk.
As a journalist, I don’t cheer or clap from my seat at keynotes, and I’m skeptical that each of Nvidia’s four new cards can truly feel twice as fast as the previous gen. But when this happened, my heart went out to all my fellow Small Form Factor (SFF) enthusiasts. Hope we see more two-slots in future!
The new DLSS 4 tech from Nvidia looks like it will reduce ghosting and smearing in games like Cyberpunk 2077. Digital Foundry found that DLSS 4 Multi Frame Generation has smoother frame times, despite two additional frames being added compared to existing Frame Generation. Latency might still be an issue, as there’s around an additional 6ms for the Multi Frame Generation on the RTX 5080.
The G-Assist System Assistant, initially revealed in June 2024, can help users “control a broad range of PC settings, from optimizing game and system settings, charting frame rates and other key performance statistics, to controlling select peripherals settings such as lighting — all via basic voice or text commands,” according to a blog post.
The venue normally fits 12,000 people, but Nvidia says it’s cramming in as many 14,000 by filling the center of the arena, too — where myself, fellow press, and analysts are seated. The screen is massive. You can watch the keynote here or on YouTube starting at 6:40PM PT — it’s running a little late.
It’s not the longest line I’ve ever seen, but it is glacial; crowds already stretched through the casino halls 2.5 hours before the keynote. Metal detectors are coming up. A sea of people behind and in front. Interest in Nvidia and its stock price are at record highs right now.
Shares were up 3.43 percent to $149.43, besting a previous closing high of $148.88 set in November. At Huang’s keynote tonight, the company is expected to announce its latest consumer graphics cards. Nvidia’s rocketing value, however, has been driven by AI chip demand. Nvidia’s 52-week intraday high is $152.89.
If there were any doubt we’d see a new generation of Nvidia graphics hardware at its CES 2025 LAN party, that’s evaporated.
The latest hint comes from @MysteryLupin on X, who’s had early leaks before, with these pictures showing a 16-inch HP Omen Max and specs including an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 GPU.
8
Verge Score
The AMD Strix Point CPU in the Zephyrus G16 gives this gaming laptop a battery life boost over the Intel version.
The new Nvidia App “reduces performance by up to 15% in some games,” according to Tom’s Hardware. Nvidia acknowledged that there is a reported problem and suggested a fix:
We are aware of a reported performance issue related to Game Filters and are actively looking into it. You can turn off Game Filters from the NVIDIA App Settings > Features > Overlay > Game Filters and Photo Mode, and then relaunch your game.
Tom’s Hardware says the fix “does indeed work.”
