Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says demand for next-generation Blackwell AI chip is 'insane'

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in an interview with CNBC's "Closing Bell Overtime" that demand for the company's next-generation artificial intelligence chip Blackwell is "insane."

"Everybody wants to have the most and everybody wants to be first," Huang said during the interview, which aired on Wednesday. Shares of Nvidia were up about 3% on Thursday morning.

Blackwell, expected to cost between $30,000 and $40,000 per unit, is in hot demand from companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta and other firms building AI data centers to power products like ChatGPT and Copilot.

Nvidia has been the main beneficiary of the artificial intelligence boom, with shares up about 150% year-to-date. The company's revenue continued to surge during the fiscal second quarter to $30.04 billion, up 122% on an annual basis. It expects $32.5 billion in sales during the current quarter.

"At a time when the technology is moving so fast, it gives us an opportunity to triple down, to really drive the innovation cycle so that we can increase capabilities, increase our throughput, decrease our costs, decrease our energy consumption," Huang told CNBC. "We're on a path to do that, and everything's on track."

Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress said in August that the company expects to ship several billion dollars in Blackwell revenue in the company's fourth fiscal quarter.

Jensen said Nvidia plans to update its AI platform each year to increase performance by two to three times.