Nvidia Says Its Latest AI Chips Will Be Affordable
- Written by Elijah Ugoh Cybersecurity & Tech Writer
- Fact-Checked by
Nvidia’s next-gen AI chips will be affordably priced to capture a wider customer base, Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang said in a speech he delivered at the “AI Woodstock” conference last Tuesday.
Nvidia is one of the leading providers of AI chips, which are used in data centers around the world today. Huang revealed at the conference last Tuesday that there’s about $1 trillion of the tech installed in data centers globally, reported the Wall Street Journal .
Nvidia’s new set of chips is codenamed Blackwell and will be priced to capture a large portion of new spending in data centers, according to Huang. This move comes amid soaring demand for its AI chips, with the previous generation, called Hopper chips, experiencing supply shortages due to high demand.
Huang said in an interview on CNBC last Tuesday that the new chips would cost between $30,000 and $40,000, which is less than what analysts had expected. The company disclosed that its chips are mostly supplied to major cloud-computing companies, which accounted for over $9.2 billion of sales in its latest fiscal year .
Nvidia makes various types of equipment and software for data centers, ranging from GPUs to networking chips and central processing units. According to the Wall Street Journal, Huang told reporters at the conference that global spending on these pieces of equipment reached around $250 billion last year, growing about 20% a year.
“Our percentage of $250 billion will likely be higher than in the past,” Huang said. As the company continues to expand its offerings to data centers, particularly by making its next-generation AI chips more affordable, it is expected that it will make competition tougher for rivals like Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Arm Holdings.
“Every generation our market is growing, and we want to make the entire market afford a Blackwell,” Huang added. The Wall Street Journal also reported that the company’s market value surpassed $2 trillion in February, making it the U.S.’s third-largest listed company after Microsoft and Apple.
It noted that as Nvidia is making more waves in the AI market, its success has lifted some of its partners, such as the server maker Super Micro Computer. Super Micro shares have risen more than three times this year already.
Portugal Orders Sam Altman-Backed Worldcoin to Halt Biometric Data Collection
- Written by Shipra Sanganeria Cybersecurity & Tech Writer
- Fact-Checked by
Portugal’s data regulator banned the controversial iris-scanning technology for the Worldcoin cryptocurrency project yesterday. The ban is meant to last for 90 days.
The Worldcoin project aims to create a global digital ID system by encouraging people to have their irises scanned on its ‘Orb’ device in exchange for free cryptocurrency (Worldcoin’s own token, WLD).
The Comissão Nacional de Proteção de Dados (CNPD) cited a high risk to its citizens’ fundamental right to personal data protection , necessitating this urgent intervention “to prevent serious or irreparable damage.”
It raised concerns about “the impossibility of deleting data or revoking consent,’’ especially in the wake of over 300,000 Portuguese people sharing biometric data with Worldcoin. Moreover, the dozens of complaints regarding unauthorized data collection from minors and dissemination of insufficient information to data subjects pushed the regulator into implementing the ban.
Worldcoin has denied any wrongdoing. “The report from CNPD is the first time we are hearing from them regarding many of these matters, including reports of underage sign-ups in Portugal, for which we have zero tolerance for and are working to address in all instances, even if a matter of a few reports,’’ Jannick Preiwisch, data protection officer at the Worldcoin Foundation said in an email to Reuters.
However, CNPD said the temporary restriction would be in place until the regulator investigates the complaints and does additional due diligence into Worldcoin’s data collection and usage process.
The order from CNPD comes just weeks after Spain’s data protection agency (AEPD) issued a similar ban of three months on Worldcoin’s biometric data collection of Spanish citizens. The AEPD said that in response to several complaints, it was forced to take this precautionary measure to safeguard and protect its citizens’ fundamental data privacy rights.
Kenya, one of the first countries in the world to see Worldcoin launch, cited similar security and privacy concerns to suspend the project’s activity in the country in August 2023.
