Over the past year, AI companies have shifted their work. The AI systems they built using Nvidia’s chips have improved at creating software code, doing research and making images and videos. (Image: Reuters)For three years, Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, has described his company’s chips as the Swiss Army knife of artificial intelligence. They were an all-purpose tool ideal for building and running AI.But on Monday, in a packed arena for Nvidia’s developer conference GTC in San Jose, California, Huang told the story of an industry with changing needs and how his company, the most valuable publicly traded company in the world, is trying to change with it.Huang unveiled a product incorporating technology from a startup called Groq. The product will pair Nvidia’s chips, which excel at receiving an AI request, with Groq’s chips, which have components that can put a charge into how Nvidia’s chips operate.Over the past year, AI companies have shifted their work. The AI systems they built using Nvidia’s chips have improved at creating software code, doing research and making images and videos. These capabilities, the result of a process known as inference, have put more value on chips that can generate data as inexpensively and quickly as possible.When it comes to cost and speed, Nvidia’s chips have lagged behind those from Google, which makes its own chips called tensor processing units; and upstarts like Cerebras, whose chips specialize in running AI. The edge those rivals enjoy in inference has helped them win business from some of Nvidia’s longtime customers, like OpenAI and Meta.The deals caught Huang’s attention. As competitors began to make a dent into his company’s business last year, Nvidia in December announced a $20 billion licensing agreement with Groq, which makes chips custom-built for inference. With the combined technology, Nvidia is expected to make inference quicker and less expensive, analysts said.“AI is able to do productive work, and therefore the inflection point of inference has arrived,” Huang said in his two-hour keynote speech Monday.Story continues below this adNvidia’s rush to get its new product to market over the past three months speaks to how quickly the AI market is changing and how far Nvidia is willing to go to remain the world’s leading chipmaker. In just three years, Nvidia has become a driving force for the U.S. economy because its chips account for more than 90% of the AI market.