Artificial intelligence semi-conductor powerhouse Nvidia kicked off its annual developer conference on Monday, with Chief Executive Jensen Huang unveiling the new flagship AI chip, the Blackwell B200, in an afternoon keynote address.

Nvidia’s new chip and software announcements at GTC 2024 will help determine whether the company can maintain its leadership position as the dominant seller of the tools needed to fuel the past year’s frenzy around AI. Nvidia dominates the data centre AI chip market, capturing roughly an 80 per cent share last year. “I hope you realise this is not a concert,” Huang, wearing his trademark black leather jacket, said after taking the stage.

The B200 takes two chips the size of Nvidia’s previous offering and binds them together into a single chip.

The new chip has 208 billion transistors, more than double the 80 billion on the company’s previous chip. All of those transistors can access the memory attached to the chip at nearly the same time, improving productivity.

“The launch of ‘Blackwell’ means Nvidia will capture even more capex dollars than its previous ‘Hopper’ generation GPU. We expect Nvidia will continue to not only lead but will widen the gap to its competitors in AI,” Kinngai Chan, managing director and senior research analyst at Summit Insights, said.

Nvidia said customers, including Amazon.com, Google, Meta Platforms, Microsoft , OpenAI and Tesla, are expected to use the new chip.