NVIDIA's highly-anticipated Blackwell AI chips are now at risk of being delayed for months as the chip maker reportedly prioritized fixing "design flaws" in the graphics units before releasing them.
Sources told The Information that NVIDIA has already notified its top-paying customers, including Microsoft, Meta, and Google, about the delay to not expect the chips' release until early 2025.
The notification did not specify the "design flaws" in need of fixing but claimed that the company is currently seeking to reduce the chips' manufacturing "cost and energy consumption by up to 25x."
NVIDIA and its partnered chip factory, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, have reportedly started conducting test production runs to resolve the issue within three months.
The Blackwell chips, which could cost up to $30,000 apiece, are posing to become NVIDIA's top seller as companies invest "tens of billions of dollars" into the chips months before its release.
NVIDIA Faces Pushbacks from Growing Regulatory Scrutiny
The latest setback on NVIDIA, which now sits as the US's most valuable corporation, came as the chip manufacturer faces regulatory scrutiny for its recent deals with AI companies.
The New York Times first reported in June that the Justice Department has signaled plans to launch antitrust probes on Microsoft, NVIDIA, and OpenAI for potential violations of anti-monopoly rules.
This is not to mention allegations of the chip manufacturer and other AI giants reportedly using licensed YouTube videos to train their latest advanced models without authorization.
YouTube's parent company, Google, has long denounced other AI firms using its user-generated content to train non-affiliated AI models.
Related Article : Microsoft, NVIDIA, and OpenAI Face Antitrust Probe Over AI Deals
NVIDIA Opens New Deals, Partnerships with Tech Giants
Despite recent setbacks and headwinds, NVIDIA has been notably growing closer to tech giants as more companies rely on its AI chips in anticipation of the further growth of the AI industry.
Just last week, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang met with Meta co-founder Mark Zuckerberg to kick off the social platform's new AI Studio to demonstrate the company's recent AI improvements to users across Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp.
The recent collaboration is seen as a sign of the deepening relationship between the two tech giants as Meta increases investment into generative AI development in the coming years.
