(June 3): Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang touted “insane” returns for investors willing to bet on the artificial intelligence (AI) boom, seeking to dispel lingering concerns around the big sums spent on AI and its long-term profitability.
The Nvidia co-founder, who’s spent much of the week at Computex proselytising about how AI will revolutionise economies and society, found time on Tuesday evening to address hundreds of representatives from financial institutions and wealthy family offices. A billionaire himself, Huang said only “crazy” people would question returns from AI, citing the trillions of dollars of value the technology has created.
“Only for the last six months has the ROI (return on equity) been completely reset. It is now insanely profitable,” Huang said at a closed-door event in Taipei hosted by Jasper Lau’s billionaire-backed investment firm Era and Chailease Holding Co, controlled by local financial mogul Andre Koo Sr. The forum at the Mandarin Oriental attracted more than 300 guests, including Hillhouse Investment, PAG and DBS Group Holdings Ltd.
Huang’s pitch coincides with a persistent debate about whether investors globally are buying into a bubble that is due to burst. On Tuesday, the Nvidia CEO took aim at investors who have called attention to an unprecedented run-up in market valuations and questioned the future monetisation potential of AI after trillions of dollars were committed towards data centre spending.
“Remember last year when we were together, the rhetoric and the narrative around the investment were, what’s the ROI?” he said. “Give me one example of some crazy person saying that now. They are going to sound insane.”
Huang touted not just his own company but gave shoutouts to some of the hundreds of technology firms it partners with, including memory chipmakers Micron Technology Inc and SK Hynix Inc, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. This week, shares of Marvell Technology Inc skyrocketed after Huang said it would join them in the US$1 trillion valuation club.
See also: China's DeepSeek close to sealing US$7 bil funding in historic AI deal — Bloomberg
In Taipei, companies that serve as crucial suppliers to Nvidia, Microsoft Corp and OpenAI are racing to borrow record amounts of capital, part of a global debt binge.
“You need land, power, you need energy, but you also need financing,” Huang said, pointing to wealthy families as “a whole new sector of the world’s wealth” on top of pension funds and retail investors.
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