Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on AI's pressure on software stocks

You think about the software industry, the Saskon that they've been calling it.

You look at law firms, cyber security firms last week and then IBM shares this week had their biggest drop in a quarter century. Um, is that overdone by the

century. Um, is that overdone by the markets or do you think there's a real good reason that investors are looking at this and saying, uhoh, um, this is going to change everything for these industries that have been so entrenched for these industries that have been so

entrenched >> deeply. I think there's a deep

>> deeply. I think there's a deep misunderstanding what cloud cloud is definitely revolutionary and it's an inflection point for AI. It's the first time that AI can perceive, it can

reason, but it can also do work. It

actually performs tasks like for example, it can, you know, write software, it could create a website for you, it could arrange a a vacation for you. And so it can actually perform

you. And so it can actually perform tasks. And that's what that's the reason

tasks. And that's what that's the reason why we call them agents. They're agentic

in their nature.

um what software companies the reason why it's it's so exciting of course is because it could write software what's going to happen are the tools companies the platform the ISVS the SAS companies

the tools companies they will use agentic systems to develop their software but enterprises are not going to go develop software they're going to

use agents to use those tools and so what's likely going to happen is that agents won't replace the tools but agents will use tools That's the reason

why we also say agents are tool users.

Why write your own why write rewrite the browser when the browser exists and just use it? Why rewrite Excel when Excel

use it? Why rewrite Excel when Excel exists just use it. And so all of these tools that we use today, whether it's Cadence or Synopsis or Service Now or

SAP, these tools exist for a fundamentally good reason. and AIs,

these agentic AIs will be intelligent software that uses these tools on our behalf and help us be more productive.

And so I what's likely to happen and this is this is very counterintuitive.

It's very likely that because we have so many agents in our company now the tool use will actually go up and so and you could see you could see it all over the

place. Uh the number of uh C compilers

place. Uh the number of uh C compilers that we use the number of Python programmers that we the Python programs that we have the number of instances are growing very very fast because the

number of agents we have that use these tools are going up. And so I I have 42,000 biological employees and I'm going to have hundreds of thousands of

digital employees and and together we're going to use a lot more tools.

>> But that means that you think that they're not going to disintermediate these companies like a Salesforce or so many of the others along the way. You

think they'll still be using those tools coming from those companies that are being sold off right now by the markets?

>> Those companies that are being sold off right now by the markets.

>> I think so. I think the markets got it wrong. I think it's very likely that

wrong. I think it's very likely that these companies that we're talking about are going to introduce agents that run on their platforms. You know, these

agents, of course, uh they have to be experts in what they do, and nobody's going to understand customer service better than Service Now, and they're going to come up with agents that are really fine-tuned and optimized for the

type of work that uses the tools that they have. In the end also um we need

they have. In the end also um we need the tools to finish their work and put the information back in a way that we can understand >> and that we call them system of records.

And so each one of these tools have their own system of records. They those

system of records exist because we put them there and we use it so that we understand the information that's finally complete. And so those system of

finally complete. And so those system of records will still be ground truth and uh they'll continue to be ground truth.

And now the agents will you know help they will use it and they will populate the system of records they will use the tools that are available on these platform. I think a thought experiment

platform. I think a thought experiment that that could be helpful is imagine one of these days when we have robots and these robots are in our homes it's

very unlikely that the robot will come up with a new quezin art. The robot will just read the manual for the quezin art and just use the quezin art. It's more

likely that instead of coming up with another way of doing microwaving that the robot will just use the microwave.

These tools exist for a good reason. And

so I'm I'm fairly certain future robots will use screwdrivers and wrenches and you know pliers and things like that.

And and and these tools are essentially in their digital form from the companies that you're talking about.

>> So they're not going to replace the tools, they're just going to replace us, the humans that use all these tools to begin with. Um, that's an interesting

begin with. Um, that's an interesting thought experiment. I like it.

thought experiment. I like it.

>> They're going to help us.

>> They're going to help us. Okay, we'll

take that.

>> They're help They're going to help us.

Yeah, they're going to help us.

>> And and the reason for that is because as it turns out that for most of our software engineers, coding is what they do. Just as for a CEO, typing is what I do. But the

purpose of the typing, the purpose of the coding is solving problems. And solving problems that we haven't even thought of solving. That's called

innovation. And so the purpose of the work won't change. And so we're going to need lots and lots of software engineers, but maybe they don't just they just don't have to code like they used to code. They'll code in a new way.

They'll code in a um uh they'll describe to the soft the agents what their intentions are, what kind of ideas they have, and the agents will write the actual software. And so, you know, we'll

actual software. And so, you know, we'll work at a different level of of abstraction. We'll be a lot more

abstraction. We'll be a lot more productive. You know, hopefully uh you

productive. You know, hopefully uh you know, create create a lot of new things and solve a lot of new problems.