Nvidia’s board has opened an independent investigation after reports that its CEO was the target of a foreign intelligence effort. China calls the allegations baseless. Ilman Shazhaev, Founder and CEO of Dizzaract, a technology group building AI infrastructure in Abu Dhabi, says the story will move markets more than it moves business. He also explains why one company carries so much weight for AI investors, and what he means when he says the next AI race is about allocating intelligence, not creating it.
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As someone building AI infrastructure yourself, what is your first read on the Nvidia investigation?
It will definitely affect the markets, but it will have more market impact than real business impact. Two weeks before this news, other analyst teams were already saying that Nvidia's market cap and share price were too high and should stabilise. I think this news just made the impact stronger. But business wise, I do not think it will have a big impact on sales, data center building plans or roadmaps.
Nvidia is the world's most valuable company, and one story about its leadership has moved the whole market. Why does a single company carry so much weight for AI investors?
The answer is simple. Nvidia is 94% of GPUs, of AI chips, today. That is better than a monopoly, and some would call it an oligopoly. As a major player in the ecosystem, anything that happens with the company or its team will affect the capital markets. But business wise, in the chips market today demand and supply are five times apart for one chip. You have five clients ready to wait for months to get supply. And thanks to Nvidia's leadership, they are opening new markets step by step. Before, it was stricter and mostly US based companies got the chips. In October Jensen Huang visited Kazakhstan and other countries. So business wise, I do not think this will have any effect on sales or GPU production.
You say the next AI race is about allocating intelligence, not creating it. What does that mean in plain terms?
For the last two years the race has been about creating AI tools, and there are so many of them. But adoption of AI in real business is still very low. When you are a big company, you see a wide offer of AI tools, but you need answers, not just tools. Tools mean you still need to build a new process flow and train your team or hire a new one, in the business where you are running your main operations, and that may not be your priority. So when I say allocating intelligence, I mean AI teams working directly with enterprises and giving them an end service, not just a toolset.