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Nvidia has emerged as one of the leaders of the tech companies racing to incorporate advanced artificial intelligence (AI) tools into their products, and the company’s stock has surged amid growth in demand with a 20% plus gain on Thursday alone.
While there are no "pure play" AI stocks, as all the publicly-traded companies heavily involved in AI have other business offerings, Nvidia has come to be considered one of the leaders in the field despite being in a similar position. Ticker Security Last Change Change % NVDA NVIDIA CORP. 371.46 +66.08 +21.64%
Nvidia stock has soared by 113% year-to-date as of Wednesday’s close – outpacing some of the biggest names in tech and AI including Google and Microsoft which have enjoyed 30% growth in their share prices in the same period. After the market closed Wednesday and Nvidia held its earning call, its share price surged as much as 28% in after-hours trading to extend its lead as the world’s most valuable chipmaker and the fifth most valuable company on Wall Street.
Nvidia .
"Generative AI is driving exponential growth in compute requirements and a fast transition to Nvidia accelerated computing, which is the most versatile, most energy efficient and the lowest [total cost of ownership] approach to train and deploy AI," said Colette Kress, Nvidia chief financial officer and executive vice president. "Generative AI drove significant upside in demand for our products, creating opportunities and broad-based global growth across all markets."
NVIDIA STOCK SURGES ON DOMINANT A.I. MARKET POSITION, BUY RECOMMENDATION FROM HSBC
Nvidia has emerged as a major player in the tech sector’s push to deploy AI solutions. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images / Getty Images)
Nvidia is deeply involved in AI in a number of areas, as it produces semiconductors, high-end graphics processing units (GPUs) and application programming interfaces (APIs) used in supercomputers and machine learning applications. Both GPUs and APIs are used in the process of training machine-learning models, and require sophisticated semiconductors, or computer chips, to generate the computing power needed to carry out the task of processing vast quantities of data.
Kress explained that several prominent tech companies with cloud data storage offerings – including Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud and Microsoft Azure – are seeing "strong demand" from "generative AI pioneers" and deploying Nvidia’s tools to satisfy it.
"Enterprise demand for AI and accelerated computing is strong. We are seeing momentum in verticals such as automotive, financial services and telecom where AI and accelerated computing are quickly becoming integral to customers’ innovation roadmaps and competitive positioning," Kress said.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT AI
Nvidia’s stock prices surged to record highs after a blockbuster earnings report. (REUTERS/Robert Galbraith / Reuters)
Nvidia AI Enterprise has more than 100 frameworks, pre-trained models and development tools that are focused on various tasks, such as speeding up data science tasks and AI model development.
She went on to say that Bloomberg is using Nvidia tools for a 50 billion parameter model, while AT&T is "working with us on AI to improve fleet dispatches so their field technicians can better serve customers."Ticker Security Last Change Change % MSFT MICROSOFT CORP. 313.85 -1.41 -0.45%GOOGL ALPHABET INC. 120.90 -1.66 -1.35%ORCL ORACLE CORP. 98.32 -0.22 -0.22%
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Nvidia has a partnership with Microsoft in which it will integrate enterprise-ready AI software into Microsoft’s Azure Machine Learning platform to help Azure customers rapidly build and deploy custom applications.
"Our collaboration with Microsoft transformed Windows into the ideal platform for creators and designers harnessing generative AI to elevate their creativity and productivity," Kress noted.
An Electron rocket launches the Baby Come Back mission from New Zealand on July 17, 2023.
Rocket Lab
Rocket Lab stock soared 8% Monday, building on a strong run fueled by space innovation.
Shares of the space infrastructure company have nearly doubled over the last two months following a slew of successful launches and a deal with the European Union.
The stock is up 63% year to date after surging nearly sixfold in 2024.
Last month, Rocket Lab announced a partnership with the European Space Agency to launch satellites for constellation navigation before December.
Rocket Lab also announced the successful launch of its 66th, 67th and 68th Electron rockets in June. The company successfully deployed two rockets from the same site in 48 hours.
Read more CNBC tech news
Rocket Lab competes with a growing list of companies in a maturing and increasingly competitive space industry with growing demand. Some of the main competitors in the sector include Elon Musk‘s SpaceX and Firefly Aerospace, which filed its prospectus to go public on Friday.
“For Electron, our little rocket, we’ve seen increased demand over the last couple of years and we’re not just launching single spacecraft — these are generally entire constellations for customers,” CEO Peter Beck told CNBC last month.
He said the company is producing a rocket every 15 days.
Beck, a New Zealand-native, founded the company in 2006. Since its debut on the Nasdaq in August 2021 through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, the Long Beach, California-based company’s market value has swelled to more than $19 billion.
The Goodwood Festival of Speed happened this weekend, and Ford’s electric SuperTruck managed to beat every other vehicle, gas or electric, to the top of the hill.
The Goodwood Festival of Speed is a yearly event on the grounds of Goodwood House, a historic estate in West Sussex, England. The event started in 1993, and has become one of the largest motorsports festivals in the world.
Many companies attend Goodwood to debut new models, and enthusiasts or race teams will show off rare or customized vehicles or race unique cars.
One of the central features of the event is the Goodwood hillclimb, a short one-way race up a small hill on the property. The track is only 1.17mi/1.89km long, with a 304ft/92.7m uphill climb. It’s not a particularly taxing event – merely a fun way to show off some classic or unique racing vehicles.
Many of these cars came just to show off, to do a demonstration run up the hill and join the company of the world’s most exotic hypercars.
But some cars show up for the glory, and join “the shootout,” the sprint up the hill for the best time.
And Ford didn’t come to show off, it came to win. And in order to win, it brought…. a truck.
The F-150 “SuperTruck” / Source: Ford
Ford’s SuperTruck is a one-off, 1,400+ horsepower prototype electric vehicle, supposedly based on the F-150 Lightning, but in fact bearing almost no similarity or even resemblance.
It’s been festooned with aerodynamic elements all about, lowered, equipped with race tires, and power output has been boosted to the aforementioned 1,400hp. It was driven by Romain Dumas, who Ford have been using since 2022 to drive their electric prototypes.
For the purposes of a hillclimb, perhaps the most important aspect is the Ford’s electric drive. Hillclimbs are a popular form of racing in Britain, and often consist of a short sprint up a small hill, showcasing acceleration and nimbleness more than anything.
Electric cars do well in this sort of racing due to their instant low-end torque, being able to jump off the line faster than the gas competition. They also tend to have plenty of torque, which helps with carrying them up the hills involved.
EVs do well on longer hillclimbs too, because as races reach higher and higher altitudes, gas cars suffer from reduced power due to less oxygen being available for combustion. EVs don’t suffer from this, so they tend to do well at, say, Pike’s Peak hillclimb – which, incidentally, Ford also brought its SuperTruck to, and also beat everybody at.
This year was not the first time Ford has brought a ridiculous electric chonker to Goodwood. Last year, it brought the SuperVan, which has a similar powertrain to the SuperTruck, and also beat everybody.
The SuperVan’s main competition last year was Subaru’s 670hp “Project Midnight” WRX, piloted by Scott Speed, who Dumas handily defeated by over two seconds, 43.98 to 46.07. And this year, the SuperTruck’s main competition was… the same Subaru, piloted by Speed, who Dumas handily defeated by just under two seconds, 43.23 to 45.03.
Ford did not, however, set an all-time record with the SuperTruck, in fact coming in fifth on the list of fastest runs ever. In front of it are two gas cars and two electric – the gas-powered Gould GR51, a tiny open-wheel race car, with a 42.90; an F1 car driven by Nick Heidfeld that set a 41.6 in 1999; the electric VW ID.R, also piloted by Dumas with a 39.90 (which broke Heidfeld’s 20-year record); and the all-time record holder the electric McMurtry Spierling “fan car,” with a mind-blowing 39.08 in 2019.
You’ll notice something similar about all of these – they’re all small racecars that are actually built for speed, whereas the truck is… a big truck. And yet, Ford still managed to beat every single challenger this year, with its big honker of an EV, because EVs are just better.
Watch the run in full below, starting at 9:34. Blink and you’ll miss it.
And now, if Ford continues its pattern, we’re looking forward to seeing the Super Mustang Mach-E at Goodwood next year, which did well this year at a tough Pike’s Peak, getting first in its class and second overall, likely due to inclement conditions that limited running to the lower portion of the course, limiting the EV’s high-altitude advantages.
Given the Super Mustang is a real racecar, and not a chonky truck, it might even give VW’s ID.R time a run for its money (but, frankly, really has no shot at the overall record, because the Spierling’s “fans” give it an absurdly unbeatable amount of downforce).
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A view of the Pentagon on December 13, 2024, in Washington, DC. Home to the US Defense Department, the Pentagon is one of the world’s largest office buildings.
Daniel Slim | Afp | Getty Images
The U.S. Department of Defense on Monday said it’s granting contract awards of up to $200 million for artificial intelligence development at Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI.
The DoD’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office said the awards will help the agency accelerate its adoption of “advanced AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges.” The companies will work to develop AI agents across several mission areas at the agency.
“The adoption of AI is transforming the Department’s ability to support our warfighters and maintain strategic advantage over our adversaries,” Doug Matty, the DoD’s chief digital and AI officer, said in a release.
Elon Musk’s xAI also announced Grok for Government on Monday, which is a suite of products that make the company’s models available to U.S. government customers. The products are available through the General Services Administration (GSA) schedule, which allows federal government departments, agencies, or offices to purchase them, according to a post on X.
OpenAI was previously awarded a year-long $200 million contract from the DoD in 2024, shortly after it said it would collaborate with defense technology startup Anduril to deploy advanced AI systems for “national security missions.”
In June, the company launched OpenAI for Government for U.S. federal, state, and local government workers.