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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang arrives to attend the opening ceremony of Siliconware Precision Industries Co. (SPIL)’s Tan Ke Plant site in Taichung, Taiwan Jan. 16, 2025. 

Ann Wang | Reuters

Nvidia announced new chips for building and deploying artificial intelligence models at its annual GTC conference on Tuesday. 

CEO Jensen Huang revealed Blackwell Ultra, a family of chips shipping in the second half of this year, as well as Vera Rubin, the company’s next-generation graphics processing unit, or GPU, that is expected to ship in 2026.

Nvidia’s sales are up more than sixfold since its business was transformed by the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022. That’s because its “big GPUs” have most of the market for developing advanced AI, a process called training.

Software developers and investors are closely watching the company’s new chips to see if they offer enough additional performance and efficiency to convince the company’s biggest end customers — cloud companies including Microsoft, Google and Amazon — to continue spending billions of dollars to build data centers based around Nvidia chips.

“This last year is where almost the entire world got involved. The computational requirement, the scaling law of AI, is more resilient, and in fact, is hyper-accelerated,” Huang said.

Tuesday’s announcements are also a test of Nvidia’s new annual release cadence. The company is striving to announce new chip families on an every-year basis. Before the AI boom, Nvidia released new chip architectures every other year. 

The GTC conference in San Jose, California, is also a show of strength for Nvidia. 

The event, Nvidia’s second in-person conference since the pandemic, is expected to have 25,000 attendees and hundreds of companies discussing the ways they use the company’s hardware for AI. That includes Waymo, Microsoft and Ford, among others. General Motors also announced that it will use Nvidia’s service for its next-generation vehicles.

The chip architecture after Rubin will be named after physicist Richard Feynman, Nvidia said on Tuesday, continuing its tradition of naming chip families after scientists. Nvidia’s Feynman chips are expected to be available in 2028, according to a slide displayed by Huang.

Nvidia will also showcase its other products and services at the event. 

For example, Nvidia announced new laptops and desktops using its chips, including two AI-focused PCs called DGX Spark and DGX Station that will be able to run large AI models such as Llama or DeepSeek. The company also announced updates to its networking parts for tying hundreds or thousands of GPUs together so they work as one, as well as a software package called Dynamo that helps users get the most out of their chips.

Jensen Huang, co-founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., speaks during the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in San Jose, California, US, on Tuesday, March 18, 2025. 

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Vera Rubin

Nvidia expects to start shipping systems on its next-generation GPU family in the second half of 2026. 

The system has two main components: a CPU, called Vera, and a new GPU design, called Rubin. It’s named after astronomer Vera Rubin.

Vera is Nvidia’s first custom CPU design, the company said, and it’s based on a core design they’ve named Olympus. 

Previously when it needed CPUs, Nvidia used an off-the-shelf design from Arm. Companies that have developed custom Arm core designs, such as Qualcomm and Apple, say that they can be more tailored and unlock better performance.

The custom Vera design will be twice as fast as the CPU used in last year’s Grace Blackwell chips, the company said. 

When paired with Vera, Rubin can manage 50 petaflops while doing inference, more than double the 20 petaflops for the company’s current Blackwell chips. Rubin can also support as much as 288 gigabytes of fast memory, which is one of the core specs that AI developers watch.

Nvidia is also making a change to what it calls a GPU. Rubin is actually two GPUs, Nvidia said. 

The Blackwell GPU, which is currently on the market, is actually two separate chips that were assembled together and made to work as one chip.

Starting with Rubin, Nvidia will say that when it combines two or more dies to make a single chip, it will refer to them as separate GPUs. In the second half of 2027, Nvidia plans to release a “Rubin Next” chip that combines four dies to make a single chip, doubling the speed of Rubin, and it will refer to that as four GPUs.

Nvidia said that will come in a rack called Vera Rubin NVL144. Previous versions of Nvidia’s rack were called NVL72.

Jensen Huang, co-founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp., speaks during the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in San Jose, California, US, on Tuesday, March 18, 2025. 

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Blackwell Ultra

Nvidia also announced new versions of its Blackwell family of chips that it calls Blackwell Ultra.

That chip will be able to produce more tokens per second, which means that the chip can generate more content in the same amount of time as its predecessor, the company said in a briefing.

Nvidia says that means that cloud providers can use Blackwell Ultra to offer a premium AI service for time-sensitive applications, allowing them to make as much as 50 times the revenue from the new chips as the Hopper generation, which shipped in 2023.

Blackwell Ultra will come in a version with two paired to an Nvidia Arm CPU, called GB300, and a version with just the GPU, called B300. It will also come in versions with eight GPUs in a single server blade and a rack version with 72 Blackwell chips.

The top four cloud companies have deployed three times the number of Blackwell chips as Hopper chips, Nvidia said.

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Nintendo forecasts sales of 15 million Switch 2 consoles as it gears up for launch

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Nintendo forecasts sales of 15 million Switch 2 consoles as it gears up for launch

Attendees walk past an advertising board during the Nintendo Switch 2 Experience at the ExCeL London international exhibition and convention centre in London, Britain, April 11, 2025. 

Isabel Infantes | Reuters

Nintendo said Thursday that it expects to sell 15 million units of its new Switch 2 console in the fiscal year ending March 2026.

It is the first forecast for sales from the Japanese gaming giant since it announced the successor to its successful Switch device, which is due to go on sale in June.

Nintendo also reported results for its fiscal fourth quarter and full year. Here’s how Nintendo did in its fiscal fourth quarter ended Mar. 31 versus LSEG estimates:

  • Revenue: 208.7 billion Japanese yen ($1.45 billion), compared with 216.16 billion yen expected.
  • Net profit: 41.6 billion yen, versus 33.91 billion yen expected.

Revenue fell 24.7% in the fourth quarter compared to the same period a year earlier, while profit plunged nearly 50%. This was largely expected as Nintendo fans await the Switch 2 and hold off on buying the current console.

Earlier this year Nintendo slashed its forecast for sales of the Switch to 11 million units for the year ended Mar. 31. Nintendo on Thursday said it sold 10.8 million units of the Switch in the year, just shy of its own forecast and down 31% year-on-year.

Tariffs in focus

Investors are also focused on Nintendo’s forecast for the fiscal year. The company expects net sales of 1.9 trillion yen, a 63% year-on-year rise but just short of LSEG estimates of 2 trillion yen. It expects net profit to jump 7.6% to 300 billion yen, below LSEG estimates of 388.8 billion yen.

However, Nintendo noted that all of its forecasts are based on U.S. tariff rates effective Apr. 10 — following a pause in U.S. President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs for many countries.

Nintendo in April delayed pre-orders for the Switch 2 in the U.S. after the initial announcement of Trump’s sweeping tariffs on countries around the world. Nintendo’s consoles are manufactured in Vietnam, which faces duties of 46% once the pause lifts.

Nintendo’s President Shuntaro Furukawa said on Thursday that if additional tariffs are imposed and prices of its goods need to be adjusted, demand in the U.S. may decrease, Reuters reported. Duties could hit profit to the tune of tens of billions of yen, Furukawa added, according to the report.

Switch 2 fuels stock rally

Investors are now focused on how the successor to the console, the Switch 2, will perform following its launch. The Switch 2 will start at $449.99 in the U.S. and has improved features compared with its predecessor.

As well as the 15 million unit sales forecast for the fiscal year ended March 2026, Nintendo said it expects to sell 45 million units of software during that same time period.

Games are important for the success of any console and Nintendo said the Switch 2 will launch with two titles — “Mario Kart World” and “Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour.” There will also be Switch 2 versions of existing games such as “Zelda: Breath of the Wild.” Nintendo is leaning on its popular characters such as Mario and Zelda to boost the appeal of the Switch 2.

Nintendo first launched the original Switch in 2017 and it has become the Japanese gaming giant’s second-best-selling console ever with over 150 million units sold. The firm managed to extend the life of the hardware thanks to hit games involving characters like Super Mario, franchises such as Pokemon and the expansion of its intellectual property into films.

Investors are hopeful the company can continue to ride its wave of popularity with shares up around 30% this year and 64% over the past 12 months.

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Apple says Epic Games contempt ruling could cost ‘substantial sums’

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Apple says Epic Games contempt ruling could cost 'substantial sums'

An Apple store in Walnut Creek, California, U.S., on April 30, 2025.

Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Apple is asking a court to pause a recent decision in its case against Epic Games and allow the iPhone maker to once again charge a commission on in-app transactions that link out for payment.

Last month, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland found that Apple had violated her original court order from the Epic trial, originally decided in 2021, that forced Apple to make limited changes to its linking out policy under California law.

Judge Rogers’ new ruling is more expansive, ordering Apple to immediately stop imposing its commissions on purchases made for iPhone apps through web links inside its apps, among other changes.

Apple is now looking to get a stay on that order, as well as another one from the case that prevents it from restricting app developers from choosing the language or placement of those links, until the entire decision can be appealed. Apple says that required changes in their current form will cost the company “substantial sums.”

“This is the latest chapter in Epic’s largely unsuccessful effort to use competition law to change how Apple runs the App Store,” Apple said in the emergency motion for a stay. The motion cites a previous order in the case that found that new linking policies would cost Apple “hundreds of millions to billions” of dollars annually.

If Apple succeeds, it will allow the company to roll back changes that have already started to shift the economics of app development. Developers including Amazon and Spotify have been able to update their apps to avoid Apple’s commissions and direct customers to their own website for payment.

Prior to the ruling, Amazon’s Kindle app told users they could not purchase a book in the iPhone app. After a recent update, the app now shows an orange “Get Book” button that links to Amazon’s website.

Epic also plans to introduce new software to allow app and game developers to easily link to their websites to take payments.  

“This forces Apple to compete,” Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said shortly after last month’s decision. “This is what we wanted all along.”

Apple said in the filing that “non-party developers are already seizing upon the Order to reduce consumer choice (and damage Apple’s business) by, among other things, impeding the use of” in-app purchases.

Rogers made a criminal referral in the case, saying that Apple misled the court and that a company vice president “outright lied” about when and why Apple decided to charge 27% for external payments. The real decision, the judge said, took place in meetings involving Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Wednesday’s filing from Apple doesn’t address Rogers’ accusations that the company misled the judge, but it does argue that the ruling was punitive. Apple’s lawyers also claimed that civil contempt sanctions can only coerce compliance with an existing order, not punish non-compliance.

Apple said earlier this week in a court filing it would appeal the contempt ruling.

“We’ve complied with the court’s order and we’re going to appeal,” Cook told investors on the company’s quarterly earnings call last week.

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Arm shares drop on weak forecast

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Arm shares drop on weak forecast

Rene Haas, CEO of chip tech provider Arm Holdings, holds a replica of a chip with his company’s logo on it, during an event in which Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim officially announces a $250 million deal with the company, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia March 5, 2025.

Hasnoor Hussain | Reuters

Arm shares dropped more than 8% in extended trading on Wednesday after the chip-design company issued weaker-than-expected guidance for the current quarter.

Here’s how the company did in the fiscal fourth quarter compared with LSEG consensus:

  • Earnings per share: 55 cents, adjusted vs. 52 cents expected
  • Revenue: $1.24 billion vs. $1.23 billion

While Arm topped estimates for the quarter ended March 31, Wall Street is looking ahead to the company’s forecast for the first quarter.

Arm said revenue will be between $1 billion and $1.1 billion. The middle of the range is below the $1.1 billion average analysts estimated, according to LSEG. Earnings per share will be between 30 cents and 38 cents, while analysts were expecting 42 cents.

SoftBank controls about 90% of Arm, and took the company public in 2023. It now has a market cap of over $130 billion as of Wednesday’s close.

Arm designs the fundamental architecture upon which many chips are built, and sells licenses for its designs to companies such as Qualcomm and Nvidia, charging royalty fees on each sale they make. The company claims 99% of premium smartphones are powered by Arm technology.

Royalty revenue in the quarter rose 18% from a year earlier to $607 million.

Net income fell 6% to $210 million, or 20 cents a share, from $224 million, or 21 cents, in the year-ago quarter. Revenue jumped 34% from $928 million a year earlier.

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