On January 9th, the world's largest consumer electronics show, CES, opened. The Daily Economic News reporter learned from Nvidia, the new "AI leader" of 2023, that the company disclosed many cooperations with Chinese giants at this conference. Affected by the relevant news, as of the closing on January 8th local time, Nvidia's (NVDA.O) stock price rose by 6.43% to $522.53 per share, setting a historical high; the market value reached 1.3 trillion US dollars, about the market value of three Intels + AMD.

It is reported that the products "newly released" by Nvidia mainly involve two businesses: gaming and automotive. In terms of gaming, Nvidia released three new consumer-grade chips for personal computers, as well as the latest ACE technology, AI NPC technology of cooperative companies, etc. According to Nvidia, some domestic game manufacturers have started to use ACE (a technology platform for creating virtual digital people using generative AI), such as NetEase Games, Zhuanqu Technology, Tencent Games, etc. In terms of automotive business, Nvidia disclosed cooperation with Chinese car manufacturers such as Xiaomi Automobile, Ideal Automobile, and Great Wall Automobile.

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Cooperate with Tencent Games, NetEase Games and other Chinese game manufacturers to be "AI NPC"

Nvidia has risen again.

As of the closing on January 8th local time, Nvidia rose by 6.43%, with the stock price reaching $522.53 per share, setting a new high, and the market value reached 1.3 trillion US dollars, about the market value of three Intels + AMD.

Image source: Screenshot of the web page

The stock market sentiment was driven by a new release.

On January 9th local time, the world's largest consumer electronics show, CES, opened, and Nvidia released three GeForce RTX 40 SUPER series GPUs at the exhibition, specifically: GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER, GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, and GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER.

According to Nvidia, the new GPU (usually refers to embedded neural network processors) has more cores and faster memory, and the AI performance has also been further upgraded. Among them, the RTX 4080 SUPER supports 4K panoramic ray tracing games, and its video generation speed is more than 1.5 times faster than the previous RTX 3080 Ti, and the image generation speed is more than 1.7 times faster; the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER has stronger game performance at ultra-high frame rates of 1440p and even 4K resolution; the RTX 4070 SUPER has 20% more cores than the RTX 4070, surpassing the performance of the previous generation 3090, and consuming less power.According to information from NVIDIA, brands such as Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and MSI will all release AI laptops based on the new RTX GPU. NVIDIA also stated that compared to using NPU, the performance of RTX AI laptops can be improved by 20 to 60 times.

In addition to gaming graphics cards, NVIDIA also released the NVIDIA Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) Production Microservices (a technical platform for creating virtual digital humans using generative AI), and ACE AI models can run in the cloud or on local PCs (personal computers).

Image source: Provided by the company

NVIDIA revealed that some domestic game manufacturers have already started using ACE, such as NetEase Games, ZQGame, and Tencent Games. In response, on January 9th, an investor asked ZQGame about the details of the company's cooperation with NVIDIA. According to ZQGame, the relevant services are now online, and cutting-edge interactive virtual characters and game developers are exploring how to change the interaction between players and users with non-player characters in games and applications through ACE and generative AI technology.

What differences will ACE bring to the game?

According to what NVIDIA said in the speech before the CES exhibition began, ACE technology will bring generative AI models of realistic characters to games and applications. It allows players to have natural, non-repetitive dialogues and interactions with NPCs (non-player characters) and between NPCs. In addition, NVIDIA also demonstrated the latest AI NPC technology of its partner start-up companies. It is reported that this technology not only allows AI NPCs to have intelligent dialogues, but these NPCs can also interact with objects in the environment.

Cooperate with car manufacturers such as Li Auto and Xiaomi

In addition to upgrading graphics cards, what has attracted more attention from the market this time is NVIDIA's moves in the automotive business.

The reporter of "Daily Economic News" learned that Li Auto has chosen NVIDIA's NVIDIA DRIVE Thor™ centralized vehicle computing platform to empower its next-generation models; Great Wall Motors, Zeekr, and Xiaomi Auto have adopted NVIDIA's NVIDIA DRIVE™ Orin platform in their new generation of autonomous driving systems.Specifically, according to NVIDIA, Ideal Automobile has launched its intelligent driving system AD Max on its L series models. This platform is equipped with dual NVIDIA DRIVE Orin processors; Great Wall Motors will build its self-developed high-end intelligent driving system, Coffee Pilot, based on NVIDIA's DRIVE Orin centralized computing platform. The first model equipped with this solution is planned to be unveiled in the first half of 2024, including high-end intelligent driving functions such as urban NOA and multi-level memory parking, which will be first equipped on the Wei brand (WEY).

In addition, Geely Holding Group's Zeekr has also launched its fourth model equipped with NVIDIA DRIVE Orin - the Zeekr 007 pure electric luxury sedan; Xiaomi's first electric vehicle, the SU7, will also use a dual NVIDIA DRIVE Orin system-on-chip. It is reported that Xiaomi's SU7 will be officially launched in the first half of this year, with two versions available, with CLTC working conditions of 415 miles (668km) and 497 miles (800km) respectively.

Public information shows that the automotive business is NVIDIA's fourth major business segment, independent of data centers, gaming, and professional visualization. According to data from the Gaogong Intelligent Automobile Research Institute, in the first half of 2023, NVIDIA's share in models with high-level assisted driving functions (NOA) reached 52.57%.

According to Wu Xinzhou, vice president of NVIDIA's automotive division, the Orin chip has become the preferred AI computing platform for today's smart cars. As car manufacturers' requirements for autonomous driving functions and AI performance increase, the next-generation Thor chip will continue to be adopted by car manufacturers for future models.

It is worth emphasizing that gaming is actually the "foundation" and starting product of NVIDIA, and the automotive business is not its largest source of revenue. Since last year, what has helped NVIDIA to ascend to the throne of AI and even launch an attack on the "chip industry's big brother" is the data center business that includes AI chips.

However, looking at the domestic market, NVIDIA's strong products such as the H100 are currently hindered in China. Although there are rumors in the industry that NVIDIA is developing substitutes that comply with the new regulations, the company has not made a public response to this.

On January 9th, there was news in the industry that NVIDIA plans to start mass production of China-specific Al chips in the second quarter of 2024 to comply with the new U.S. export control regulations, with the strongest model being the H20. On the afternoon of January 9th, a reporter from the "Daily Economic News" consulted NVIDIA about this, and NVIDIA refused to comment.