Investors looking for artificial intelligence (AI) plays have basically one hardware option: Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA). Nvidia’s lead in artificial intelligence compute has only extended in the recent years, or at least in the market’s perception, and Nvidia is far and away the most valuable semiconductor company in the world.
That AI advantage, fueled by Nvidia’s adaptation of its graphic processing units to AI compute needs, looms large as the need for AI computing expands exponentially. In the first two episodes of The Razor’s Edge’s The Future of Compute series, we spoke with the chief product officer of Ampere Computing and the chief financial officer of Cerebras, and the common theme was that AI computing needs were going to more than double over the 5-10 years ahead. That positions a leader well for increasing gains, which makes Nvidia stock’s wild rise a little more understandable.
But there’s more to the AI picture than that. Our third episode of the series is with Naveen Rao, founder of Nervana Systems – the first next-gen AI-chip maker. Nervana sold itself to Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) in 2016, and Rao then led Intel’s AI road map for a few years before leaving in 2020. He’s back with MosaicML, an AI algorithms training company that he calls something like “benchmarking as a service.”
Rao shares his perspective from a lifetime in the industry, much of it with a front-row seat at some of the biggest players in the business. He also qualifies the excitement around AI, because the great compute and Taiwan Semiconductor’s position is leading many of the biggest AI users – think your Alphabets (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Amazons (NASDAQ:AMZN) to bring their AI chip development in-house. Which looms as a threat for merchant silicon makers, most obviously one like Intel, but extending to a player like Nvidia.
We get into that, as well as how the needs in AI have changed over the last few years, and what Rao’s take is on the Nvidia/Arm merger, the supply chain, and Tesla’s AI ambitions. Listen to it below on the desktop, or go here for Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/2cFAXmq7MqbvyiBYDlFwxi?si=6fd7e7ec002f4a59 - or here for Apple - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-razors-edge/id1479608194.
Topics Covered
- 2:30 minute mark – Naveen’s entry into the AI world over his career
- 6:00 – What did people have to learn about neural networks?
- 8:00 – MosaicML's goal
- 14:00 – View on the current landscape
- 17:30 – The model Mosaic is targeting
- 20:30 – The significance of Nvidia’s A100 and shift to AI dedicated GPUs – the field in 2016
- 26:00 – The field in 2018
- 32:30 – How to look at the AI market today
- 38:30 – The challenges facing legacy merchant silicon makers
- 45:30 – Can the industry continue to develop with such a fragmented environment
- 51:30 – Intel’s reaction to the current climate
- 55:30 – Where are the IPOs?
- 1:04:00 – Tesla’s D1 Chip and AI ambitions
- 1:12:30 – The Nvidia/Arm deal
- 1:15:30 – Supply Chain challenges