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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang introduces new products as he delivers the keynote address at the GTC AI Conference in San Jose, California, on March 18, 2025.

Josh Edelson | AFP | Getty Images

At the end of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s unscripted two-hour keynote on Tuesday, his message was clear: Get the fastest chips that the company makes.

Speaking at Nvidia’s GTC conference, Huang said that questions clients have about the cost and return on investment the company’s graphics processors, or GPUs, will go away with faster chips that can be digitally sliced and used to serve artificial intelligence to millions of people at the same time.

“Over the next 10 years, because we could see improving performance so dramatically, speed is the best cost-reduction system,” Huang said in a meeting with journalists shortly after his GTC keynote.

The company dedicated 10 minutes during Huang’s speech to explain the economics of faster chips for cloud providers, complete with Huang doing envelope math out loud on each chip’s cost-per-token, a measure of how much it costs to create one unit of AI output.

Huang told reporters that he presented the math because that’s what’s on the mind of hyperscale cloud and AI companies.

The company’s Blackwell Ultra systems, coming out this year, could provide data centers 50 times more revenue than its Hopper systems because it’s so much faster at serving AI to multiple users, Nvidia says. 

Investors worry about whether the four major cloud providers — Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Oracle — could slow down their torrid pace of capital expenditures centered around pricey AI chips. Nvidia doesn’t reveal prices for its AI chips, but analysts say Blackwell can cost $40,000 per GPU.

Already, the four largest cloud providers have bought 3.6 million Blackwell GPUs, under Nvidia’s new convention that counts each Blackwell as 2 GPUs. That’s up from 1.3 million Hopper GPUs, Blackwell’s predecessor, Nvidia said Tuesday. 

The company decided to announce its roadmap for 2027’s Rubin Next and 2028’s Feynman AI chips, Huang said, because cloud customers are already planning expensive data centers and want to know the broad strokes of Nvidia’s plans. 

“We know right now, as we speak, in a couple of years, several hundred billion dollars of AI infrastructure” will be built, Huang said. “You’ve got the budget approved. You got the power approved. You got the land.”

Huang dismissed the notion that custom chips from cloud providers could challenge Nvidia’s GPUs, arguing they’re not flexible enough for fast-moving AI algorithms. He also expressed doubt that many of the recently announced custom AI chips, known within the industry as ASICs, would make it to market.

“A lot of ASICs get canceled,” Huang said. “The ASIC still has to be better than the best.”

Huang said his is focus on making sure those big projects use the latest and greatest Nvidia systems.

“So the question is, what do you want for several $100 billion?” Huang said.

WATCH: CNBC’s full interview with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang

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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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AppLovin shares pop on earnings beat as it announces sale of mobile gaming business

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AppLovin shares pop on earnings beat as it announces sale of mobile gaming business

Thomas Fuller | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images


AppLovin shares soared as high as 15% in extended trading after the company reported earnings and revenue that beat expectations and announced the sale of its mobile gaming business.

Here’s how the company did compared to LSEG consensus estimates:

  • Earnings: $1.67 per share vs $1.45 per share expected
  • Revenue: $1.48 billion vs $1.38 billion expected

AppLovin also agreed on Wednesday to sell its mobile gaming business to Tripledot Studios in a deal worth $400 million in cash considerations. The advertising tech company will also obtain  a roughly 20% ownership stake in Tripledot Studios, which makes mobile games like Sudoko Friends, Puzzletime and Solitaire Classic.”

The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2025.

AppLovin said second-quarter sales should come in the range of $1.2 billion to $1.22 billion, trailing analysts expectations of $1.38 billion.

The company reported first-quarter net income of $576 million, or $1.67 per share, up from $234 million, or 67 cents per share, in the same quarter of 2024.

AppLovin total costs and expenses for the first quarter came in at $820.55 million, representing a 14% increase from the previous year during the same quarter.

The ad-tech firm said in February that it had signed a term sheet to sell its apps business for “total estimated consideration” of $900 million, which included $500 million in cash.

AppLovin’s business has been split between advertising and apps, which is primarily made up of game studios that the company has acquired over the years. With the historic growth in its advertising unit, due to rapid advancements in artificial intelligence, the apps business had become much less important.

The company logged $1.16 billion in first-quarter advertising sales, up from the $678 million it recorded a year ago during the same period.

Sales of the company’s apps-related business for the quarter came in at $325 million, which was a 14% decline from the prior year.

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