‘100% Nvidia’s Fault’: CEO Jensen Huang Says the Company’s AI Chip With ‘Insane’ Demand Had a Crucial Design Flaw

Nvidia’s Blackwell AI chip, the same one that Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said had “insane” demand, is now free of a design error that caused a production delay.

According to a Wednesday Reuters report, Huang said that the design mistake “was 100% Nvidia’s fault.”

“We had a design flaw in Blackwell,” he stated. “It was functional, but the design flaw caused the yield to be low.”

He specified the nature of the problem, stating that “in order to make a Blackwell computer work, seven different types of chips were designed from scratch and had to be ramped into production at the same time.” After fixing the design flaw, Nvidia has been producing Blackwell “at an incredible pace,” Huang said.

The chips were supposed to ship in the second quarter of this year, but are now shipping in the fourth quarter.

^{Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang displays a Blackwell chip. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images}

Reports that Blackwell could be delayed ramped up in August, causing Nvidia shares to drop. Since then, the stock has climbed back up, growing over 188% year-to-date at the time of writing.

Huang has previously said that intense demand was the one thing that kept him up at night and that everyone wanted to be the first to use the Blackwell chip.

“We have a lot of people on our shoulders, and everybody is counting on us,” he said last month.

Snags in Blackwell production affect some of the world’s biggest tech companies, which are Nvidia’s biggest customers. Over 40% of Nvidia’s revenue comes from just four clients: Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft.

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