Nvidia’s Jensen Huang Bets Big on a $200 Billion CPU Market for AI Agents

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has a knack for making bold predictions that actually pan out. After posting yet another record quarter—$81.6 billion in revenue, with a $91 billion forecast for next quarter—he unveiled what he calls a “brand new” $200 billion total addressable market for the company. The source? A CPU called Vera, introduced in March, that Huang claims is “the world’s first CPU purpose-built for agentic AI.”

Here’s the logic: While GPUs handle the heavy thinking for AI models, agents—autonomous programs that execute tasks—run primarily on CPUs. Huang argues that as billions of agents emerge, they’ll need their own CPU-driven “PCs.” Vera is designed to process tokens as fast as possible, unlike traditional cloud CPUs optimized for running multiple app instances. Nvidia has already sold $20 billion worth of standalone Vera CPUs this year, according to Huang.

But skeptics note that cloud giants like AWS are pushing their own AI chips. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently touted a massive Meta contract for Amazon’s homegrown CPUs, arguing AWS can match or beat Nvidia. Huang counters that every major hyperscaler and system maker is partnering with Nvidia on Vera. “The world is rebuilding computing for agentic AI and robotic physical AI,” he said. “Nvidia sits at the center.”

Wall Street remains nervous about what could unseat Nvidia, but Huang’s track record suggests dismissing this bet would be risky.