Nvidia partners with Accenture to accelerate AI adoption in businesses

Nvidia has deepened ties with technology consultant Accenture as part of its campaign to spur the deployment of artificial intelligence in businesses and thereby ramp up demand for its semiconductor products.

The partnership will see Accenture establish an Nvidia Business Group devoted to assisting clients in using and scaling generative AI tools, said the companies in a statement issued on Wednesday. Accenture has trained 30,000 specialists to use Nvidia's technology to help their customers implement and benefit from the technology in a very short period.

While Nvidia's chips dominate AI hardware deployments, orders mostly come from just a few of the largest data centre operators, including Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc.'s AWS and Alphabet Inc.'s Google. Analysts and investors have complained that the tens of billions of dollars companies are sinking into new infrastructure haven't yet produced a financial payback that's worth the expense.

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Nvidia has responded with a wave of software, services, and hardware that makes the technology more accessible and useful to a wider range of customers, all geared to sustaining what Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang describes as a new industrial revolution.

Huang told CNBC he considers Accenture the "connective fabric" between Nvidia's technology and customers. He and Accenture Chief Executive Julie Sweet began mulling the deal four months ago, Huang said.

Nvidia's CEO also provided an update on its newest line of chips, Blackwell. It is currently being produced in full volume and ahead of schedule. There had been concerns that production snags might slow the product’s rollout.

“Demand for Blackwell is insane,” he told CNBC. “Everybody wants the most, and everybody wants to be first.”

Nvidia shares, which were up 1.6 per cent on Wednesday in New York, rose more than 1 per cent in extended trading following these comments.

Accenture has invested very heavily in generative AI and introduced its so-called AI Refinery using Nvidia's technology in July. The tool empowers clients to build bespoke large language models to power AI applications specific to their industries. The company attributed its most recent quarterly earnings beat to high demand for its help in deploying generative AI.

According to Lan Guan, AI lead at Accenture, 9 out of 10 organisations now feel that generative AI is going to have an impact, but less than 10 per cent have found a way to make it work for them yet.