/2021/04/14/157006466p.jpg)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE - JAKARTA - Nvidia shares NVDA.Overall about 2% on Tuesday after having more than tripled in value in the past year, as investors awaited more details on the company's latest AI chip that is expected to further cement its lead in the industry.
Shares of the world's third most-valuable firm dropped to $865, with some analysts saying investors had already factored in the unveiling of the B200 Blackwell chip, which the company claims is 30 times faster at some tasks than its predecessor.
The Blackwell chip will be priced between $30,000 and $40,000, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC.
Read Also: Dollar Inches Higher as Traders Await Fed Signal on Rate Cuts
The firm, which has cornered 80% of the AI chips market, is expected to provide more details at its presentation for financial analysts at 11:30 a.m. ET (1530 GMT).
"The Blackwell technology shows a significant performance uplift compared to Hopper (the current flagship chip) but it's always hard to live up to the hype," said David Wagner, portfolio manager at Aptus Capital Advisors, adding that investors were still digesting the nearly 80% year-to-date price surge.
Nvidia's stock hit a record high of $974 just seven sessions ago.
Along with the Blackwell chip, which combines two squares of silicon the size of the company's previous offering, Nvidia detailed a new set of software tools on Monday, to help developers sell artificial intelligence models more easily to firms that use its technology.
Read Also: Asian Markets Gain as Global Investors Await US Inflation Data
Nvidia expects major customers including Amazon.com (AMZN.O,) Alphabet, Google (GOOGL.O), Meta Platforms (META.O), Microsoft MSFT.O, OpenAI, and (Tesla TSLA.O) to use the new flagship chip.
The company is also shifting from selling single chips to selling total systems.
Its hardware products will likely remain "best-of-breed" in the AI industry, Morningstar analysts said, lifting their estimates for Nvidia data center revenue for 2026 and 2028.
"We remain impressed with Nvidia's ability to elbow into additional hardware, software, and networking products and platforms," they said.
The software push shows how Nvidia, whose chips are mostly used to train large-language models like Google's Gemini, is trying to make its hardware easier to adapt for companies rushing to integrate generative AI into their businesses.
Read Also: Peluang Berinvestasi Pada Bisnis Kecerdasasan Buatan (AI)
Several analysts have said the market for inference chips, which help AI models answer queries and produce images in response to user prompts, will ultimately be much bigger than the training chips market, on which Nvidia has a tight hold.
Many analysts expect Nvidia's market share to drop several percentage points this year, as competitors launch new products and the company's largest customers make their chips, although its dominance is expected to remain unchallenged.
Blackwell is a "monster in the chip world", but it could take a bit of time to ascertain if it can deliver for Nvidia's bottom line in the way the current chip does, said Kathleen Brooks, research director at Polish broker XTB.
Shares of other high-flying chipmakers also fell, with the Philadelphia chip index.SOXdown about 2.4%.
Nvidia's forward price-to-earnings ratio, a commonly used metric to value stocks, stood at 34.6, below its three-year average of 42.
