Nvidia CEO Says AI Chip Orders Keep Outpacing Supply, Backlog Growing

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said customer orders for AI chips continue to outpace supply, with new orders arriving "almost every week, every day" and the backlog still rising. Speaking on the BG2 podcast aired Oct. 15, he said the strong demand has not weakened even amid a recent sell-off in tech stocks and questions about how buyers will fund massive expansion.

Huang said top cloud providers, emerging AI cloud operators, and hardware makers have placed huge orders. Customer forecasts typically extend at least a year out, with the largest customers planning as far as two years ahead, while Nvidia's current allocations remain far below demand. He also cited power shortages, unfinished data centers, and component shortages as key constraints on expanding supply.

Responding to concerns that OpenAI and Anthropic would need to generate trillions of dollars in revenue to justify AI infrastructure investment, Huang rejected the view as a misunderstanding. He estimated frontier AI labs account for only about 25% to 30% of Nvidia's overall compute demand, with the rest coming from legacy architecture upgrades, startups, and enterprises building proprietary applications. "They absolutely do not need to reach trillion-dollar revenue to prove their success," he said.