It was a week of dueling conferences. First up, Nerd Woodstock, Nvidia GTC, back after a five year break for the pandemic and right sized for the world’s third most valuable company. A few dozen miles up the road in San Franciso, the annual Game Developers Conference drew developers and executives from across the gaming world to celebrate a business that now dwarfs television, streaming services and movies, even though the industry is still reeling from the post-pandemic slow down.
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Nvidia’s founder and CEO, Jensen Huang, kicked off what the company calls “The Woodstock of AI.” Nerd Woodstock would be more accurate, although Huang commanded the stage like a rock star. Nvidia has been a big, big winner in AI so far, and they are now the world’s third most valuable company, valued at two trillion dollars, trailing only Apple and Microsoft. I saw him at Siggraph and he radiated ambition and optimism as he rolled out their advanced H100 Hopper chips, built specifically for AI applications. This week Nvidia introduced Blackwell, a chip
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that boasts significant gains in both training and running AI models, along with lower cost and energy consumption. That’s not all. Huang was up there for a good ninety minutes. NVIDIA’s Project GR00T promises to revolutionize humanoid robots. This AI system will act as the “brain,” teaching robots to understand commands, copy human movements, and develop new abilities. Top robotics companies are already onboard. NVIDIA also released supporting tools for robot training and AI workload management. This breakthrough could finally bring cutting-edge AI out of the digital realm and into the physical world, creating robots that interact with us in smarter, more intuitive ways.
State of Unreal At the Game Developers Conference (GDC). Epic Games make Unreal Engine, the platform on which most the most graphically demanding AAA PC and console games are made. They are also responsible for Fortnite, a fast developing Metaverse. Their “State of Unreal” address is one of the most highly anticipated events at GDC. This year it was delivered by CTO Kim Libreri. Epic is heavily investing in user-generated content platforms like Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN). Creators have made over 80,000 UEFN islands, and earned $320 million in payouts. The Epic Games Store is coming to mobile later this year and will include major franchises like Star Wars. We got a better look at the evolving Lego Fortnite, and the integration of MetaHumans into UEFN for easy creation of realistic characters. Unreal Engine 5.4 promises significant performance improvements, especially for rendering and animation.
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Saudi Arabia is poised to become a major player in the artificial intelligence (AI) landscape with a planned $40 billion investment fund. That enormous sum dwarfs even the largest U.S. funds, and would be second globally only to Japan’s SoftBank. This move highlights the global rush towards AI and the country’s ambition to diversify its economy. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is in talks with top Silicon Valley firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, about potential partnerships. If successful, this fund would make Saudi Arabia the world’s largest AI investor, showcasing their commitment to the technology and desire for a greater role in geopolitics.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/charliefink/2024/03/21/saudis-to-bet-forty-billion-on-ai-nvidias-nerd-woodstock-state-of-unreal/amp/
