Mark Zuckerberg is sitting on a huge stockpile of AI chips as companies compete for limited supplies

Beatrice NolanFeb 23, 2024, 23:43 IST

Business Insider

Mark Zuckerberg.JOSH EDELSON

Nvidia chips remain in high demand, especially from tech companies.
Its CEO told analysts the company was trying its best to allocate them fairly.

Nvidia's CEO recently shed light on the allocation of its in-demand chips.

The comments have brought Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg's extensive stockpile back into the spotlight.

Jensen Huang told investors on Wednesday that the company was doing its best to share the chips evenly amid unprecedented demand.

"We do the best we can to allocate fairly and to avoid allocating unnecessarily," Huang said in a call with analysts following Nvidia's fourth-quarter results.Huang was responding to a question about distributing chips between the companies fighting over a limited supply, many of which are competitors."At the core of it, we want to allocate fairly, avoiding waste, and looking for opportunities to connect partners and end users," he said.Meanwhile, Zuckerberg is plowing on with his plan to acquire hundreds of thousands of chips as part of his ambition to create a "top-level product group" focused on generative AI.

Last month, Zuckerberg told The Verge that Meta would have more than 340,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs — the main chips companies use to train and deploy AI models — by the end of 2024.Taking into account chips of other types, the CEO said he expected Meta to have amassed 600,000 GPUs by the end of the year, the report said.The surge in global demand for the chips has dramatically boosted Nvidia's stock over the last 12 months.The AI chipmaker reported better-than-expected quarterly revenues on Wednesday, with revenues of $22.1 billion in the fourth quarter — a 265% year-on-year increase. Nvidia stock surged almost 15% in premarket trading after posting the blockbuster sales, Business Insider reported.Meta did not immediately respond to BI's request for comment.

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Mark Zuckerberg is sitting on a huge stockpile of AI chips as companies compete for limited supplies