Agentic AI takes middle stage
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Nvidia’s yearly showcase occasion — dubbed the ‘Tremendous Bowl of AI’ by some — kicked off initially of the week to a lot fanfare throughout the tech sector. The occasion sees tens of 1000’s of attendees collect in California to get the most recent on the world’s most dear firm’s plans for the long run.
Did not handle to snag a ticket? No downside. I caught up with CNBC’s Katie Tarasov, who was on the bottom on the occasion, to get a way of what went down.
Jensen Huang, chief government officer of Nvidia Corp., speaks throughout a information convention on the Nvidia GTC convention in San Jose, California, US, on Tuesday, March 17, 2026.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Photos
Kai: What have been the important thing bulletins this yr?
Katie: I am at all times anticipating the largest {hardware} bulletins as a result of it is Nvidia chips which can be filling AI information facilities and powering nearly each main firm’s AI ambitions. We noticed two huge new chip bulletins throughout CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote on Monday.
First was a completely new sort of chip referred to as a Language Processing Unit, or LPU. It is the primary chip Nvidia’s unveiling utilizing expertise it acquired from chip startup Groq in December. That $20 billion deal was Nvidia’s greatest buy ever. Whereas Nvidia’s star graphics processing models have 1000’s of cores that carry out many operations concurrently, the Groq 3 LPU is constructed with a single core optimized for dashing up these GPUs.
The opposite huge chip announcement was the disclosing of a rack crammed totally with Nvidia’s latest Vera central processing models, or CPUs. I wrote a chunk final week explaining how the CPU is having a renaissance as Nvidia sees it as a coming bottleneck for agentic AI, which requires extra information switch and general-purpose compute sometimes dealt with by the CPU.
And one software program point out that stood out: Nvidia introduced NemoClaw, an enterprise-level model of OpenClaw that layers Nvidia’s software program stack on prime of the autonomous AI agent platform.
Kai: What stood out concerning the Nvidia GTC 2026 convention?
Katie: The most important theme this yr was that the long run is agentic. We’re seeing a whole lot of on a regular basis AI use shift from call-and-answer chatbots to extra task-oriented AI brokers. That is creating a giant want for sooner inference as a result of brokers spawn different brokers, requiring a whole lot of orchestration and information switch between all of them to perform their duties.
Huang stated agentic AI has reached an “inflection level” and is driving a elementary shift in computing wants. That is why we noticed much less give attention to the GPU and extra give attention to new compute configurations like full racks of LPUs and CPUs.
Total, I used to be personally blown away by the crowds and hype on the showroom flooring — it was unrecognizable from my first GTC in 2019. I final sat down with Huang for a prolonged interview in 2022, and it was a captivating dialog that is knowledgeable a lot of my chip reporting since.
However I by no means would have guessed that 4 years later, Huang would attain the full-blown celeb standing I witnessed when he was swarmed by selfie-seekers at each flip, even throughout the personal press Q&A session.
Kai: Why has Nvidia’s inventory dropped barely previously few days?
Katie: This can be a troublesome query to reply. Not even Huang’s expectations of $1 trillion in Blackwell and Vera Rubin buy orders by 2027 moved the needle. It looks as if Wall Avenue’s expectations are so excessive, it is nearly unattainable for Nvidia to impress.
One guess is that GTC might have underwhelmed the road as a result of Nvidia selected to unveil Vera Rubin earlier, at January’s Shopper Digital Present, as an alternative of at its personal convention. We additionally noticed little or no motion regardless of seeing the fruits of January’s $20 billion spend on Groq, maybe as a result of a first-of-its-kind chip just like the LPU is not at all times a homerun.
Huang additionally signaled extra income is forthcoming from China with gross sales of the H200 restarting there, however export controls have been such a shifting goal that buyers could also be ready to see these gross sales confirmed within the subsequent earnings assertion.
Kai: What did we find out about Nvidia’s plans for the long run from the convention?
Katie: Total, I feel we’re seeing Nvidia shift its technique to align with altering compute wants as agentic AI takes off. As an alternative of placing all its eggs within the GPU basket, Nvidia’s taking a extra “soup-to-nuts” technique, as Inventive Methods analyst Ben Bajarin put it to me.
However Huang additionally confirmed a sneak peak of what is subsequent for its most buzz-worthy line: the Kyber rack-scale structure. It can combine 144 GPUs in compute trays that sit vertically as an alternative of horizontally to be able to enhance density and decrease latency. The Kyber design shall be obtainable in Vera Rubin Extremely, Nvidia’s subsequent rack-scale system, anticipated to ship in 2027.
Newest updates
The U.S. Legal professional’s Workplace for the Southern District of New York has charged associates of an unidentified U.S. server maker with illegally diverting billions of {dollars} in Nvidia-powered servers to China.
OpenAI will mix its internet browser, ChatGPT app and Codex coding app right into a singular desktop tremendous app, CNBC confirmed on Thursday.
China’s tech giants are holding public occasions to encourage on a regular basis individuals to get viral AI assistant OpenClaw downloaded on their laptops and telephones.
Bain Capital has began reaching out to potential patrons for its stake in Bridge Information Centres, two individuals aware of the matter informed CNBC, because the personal fairness agency eyes exits amid rising demand for AI infrastructure.
Chinese language tech large Alibaba reported internet earnings dropped 66% in its December quarter on Thursday, because it missed analyst income expectations.
Inventory of the week
Chipmaker Micron inventory motion since Wednesday 18 March.
Chipmaker Micron reported it had tripled income and sailed previous analysts’ estimates in its newest quarterly outcomes on Wednesday, however champagne and occasion poppers weren’t the order of the day.
The corporate, which focuses on reminiscence chips — a key part within the AI increase, noticed its inventory fall regardless of blockbuster earnings, echoing buyers’ unenthusiastic response to Nvidia’s better-than-expected leads to February.
