NVIDIA's Blackwell GPU: Production Ramp-Up and CEO's Defense Amid Design Challenges

Nvidia: Blackwell GPU Production Expected To Ramp Up In Q4

Demand for the company's Hopper GPUs remains strong, Nvidia executives said during the company's fiscal 2025 Q2 earnings call Wednesday, which highlighted 122-percent revenue growth to more than $30 billion. Samples of Nvidia's much-anticipated Blackwell-architecture GPUs are currently shipping to Nvidia partners and customers, according to company executives, with production expected to ramp up in the company's fiscal fourth quarter. At the same time demand remains strong for Nvidia's Hopper microarchitecture-based GPUs, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang and CFO Colette Kress said on a call with financial analysts Wednesday detailing the company's fiscal 2025 second quarter financial results. "Hopper demand remains strong and the anticipation for Blackwell is incredible," Huang said in a statement accompanying the chip designer's financial results. [Related: Nvidia Earnings Preview: 5 Things To Know] For Nvidia's fiscal 2025 second quarter (ended July 28), revenue reached $30.04 billion, up more than 122 percent from $13.51 billion in the second quarter of fiscal 2023. Net income for the latest quarter was $16.60 billion (68 cents per share), up more than 168 percent from $6.19 billion one year earlier. Nvidia's results generally exceeded investor expectations, both for top-line revenue growth and bottom-line earnings. But the company's share price was down in after-hours trading, dropping nearly 7 percent or almost $9 to $116.95 from Wednesday's $125.61 close. Reports surfaced in early August that Nvidia was delaying the release of the Blackwell GPUs by three or more months due to technical issues with the processor's underlying architecture. One report said the first Blackwell GPU design would arrive in the fourth quarter instead of the third quarter. During the earnings call Kress said Nvidia "executed a change to the Blackwell GPU mask to improve production yield." "Blackwell is widely sampling" to customers and partners, Kress said, and "Blackwell production ramp is scheduled to begin in the fourth quarter and continue into fiscal year '26." The CFO added that the company expects to book "several billion dollars in Blackwell revenue" in the fourth quarter. "Demand for Blackwell platforms is well above supply and we expect this to continue into next year," she said. Later in the call Huang, in response to an analyst's question about the Blackwell changes, said "the change to the [Blackwell] mask is complete" and that "no functional changes" to the design were necessary. He touted the number of system designs incorporating the Blackwell chip that were shown at the Computex trade show in Taipei, Taiwan, in June. Kress said shipments of Nvidia's Hopper GPUs "are expected to increase in the second half of fiscal 2025. Hopper supply and availability have improved." The CFO also touted the demand for Nvidia's RTX computer graphics platform with more than 200 RTX laptop designs and an installed base of 100 million devices. "Every PC with RTX is an AI PC," she said. Nvidia reported that data center revenue in the second quarter was $26.3 billion, up 154 percent from the same quarter one year before. Nvidia said it expects revenue in its fiscal 2025 third quarter to reach $32.5 billion, plus or minus 2 percent.

Nvidia's Blackwell GPU Set For Q4 Shipments -- Jensen Huang Confirms Mask Change Completion And 'Incredible' Customer Anticipation - NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

On Wednesday, Nvidia Corporation NVDA reported its second-quarter revenue, during which the tech giant announced modifications to the Blackwell GPU mask intending to boost production yields. What Happened: During the call, Nvidia's CFO Colette M. Kress, revealed, "We executed a change to the Blackwell GPU mass to improve production yields." She also mentioned that the production ramp for Blackwell is scheduled to kick off in the fourth quarter and extend into fiscal year 2026. "Our third-quarter revenue outlook incorporates continued growth of our Hopper architecture and sampling of our Blackwell products," she added. See Also: Here's What Nvidia's Jensen Huang Had To Say About AMD' CEO And His Cousin Lisa Su On the subject of the impact of the changes on the Blackwell GPU mask, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stated, "The change to the mask is complete. There were no functional changes necessary." He further stated that customers are sampling Blackwell and the anticipation for it is "incredible." He expects to start production in the fourth quarter. "When I said ship production in fourth quarter, I mean shipping out, I don't mean starting to ship, but I mean -- I don't mean starting production but shipping up," he stated. Subscribe to the Benzinga Tech Trends newsletter to get all the latest tech developments delivered to your inbox. Why It Matters: Nvidia's second-quarter revenue exceeded Street expectations. The company's strong data center revenue contributed significantly to its top line, although the gross margin contracted from the first quarter. Analysts had anticipated that Blackwell would start full-scale shipments this quarter, but Nvidia now projects "several billions of dollars" in revenue during the last three months of the year. Price Action: At the time of writing, in the after-hours session, Nvidia shares were down by 6.89% reaching $116.95. The tech giant ended Wednesday's session at $125.61, a decrease of 2.10%, according to Benzinga Pro data. Photo Courtesy: Shutterstock.com Check out more of Benzinga's Consumer Tech coverage by following this link. Read Next: Snowden Says Telegram Founder's Arrest Is An 'Assault' On Basic Human Rights, Accuses French President Macron Of 'Taking Hostages' To Access Private Communications Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang defends Blackwell design problems in post-earnings interview, promising 'billions' in Q4 revenues

This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Log in. The company acknowledged this week that the Blackwell issues required a rework and were partially responsible for a dip in Nvidia's gross margin. Soon after the initial call, Citi predicted Nvidia's earnings would fall short of the $2 billion estimate beat it has secured in the last four quarters due to the potential Blackwell delay, Business Insider previously reported. But in a post-earnings interview with Bloomberg TV, Huang defended Blackwell's rollout, saying the company made a "mass change to improve the yield" and insisting the platform's functionality is "wonderful." "We're sampling Blackwell all over the world today," Huang told the outlet. "I'm giving tours to people of the Blackwell systems we have up and running." The CEO reiterated that Nvidia has started volume production on Blackwell and said production will start shipping in the company's fiscal fourth quarter, leading to "billions of dollars" of Blackwell revenues and further ramping from there. Interest in the next-generation chip remains high, but standing up Blackwell capacity is still weeks or months away. As a result, Huang said on the earnings call that demand for Hopper, the company's current graphics processing unit, remains "really strong." Analysts' disappointment in the lack of Blackwell specifics led to an after-hour stock decline. Huang, however, told Bloomberg that AI spending is still on the up and up.