Hello, Reader.
If I described a heavily attended, several-day event that celebrated cultural change and new ideas… you might think of the 1969 rock festival Woodstock.
Although a little bit less rock ’n’ roll, I’m actually talking about the GPU Technology Conference (GTC) – dubbed the “AI Woodstock” – held by Nvidia Corp. (NVDA).
The company’s 2024 GTC meeting kicked off yesterday, attended by hundreds of thousands of in-person and virtual investors and developers.
During Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote address, he introduced the company’s new AI processor, Blackwell. That, he says, is the “world’s most powerful chip” for AI.
Rock on.
But with the advent of Blackwell chips, I can’t help but wonder…
What else Nvidia doing?
So, in today’s Smart Money, I’ll explore that weighty question. The answer could lead to some surprising investment insights.
And where it’s hidden might actually surprise you…
Hidden in Plain… Earnings Report
On February 21, Nvidia reported the latest of its by-now monotonously amazing earnings reports.
Throughout the one-hour conference call that followed the report, company officers and Wall Street analysts both gushed repeatedly about AI; they mentioned it no less than 162 times.
By comparison, the word “healthcare” received almost no mentions at all, even though Nvidia has been ramping up its investments in healthcare AI. During the earnings call, Nvidia Chief Financial Officer Colette Cress made the only significant reference to this activity when she said…
In healthcare, digital biology and generative AI are helping to reinvent drug discovery, surgery, medical imaging and wearable devices. We have built deep domain expertise in healthcare over the past decade, creating the NVIDIA Clara healthcare platform and NVIDIA BioNeMo, a generative AI service to develop, customize, and deploy AI foundation models for computer-aided drug discovery. BioNeMo features a growing collection of pre-trained Biomolecular AI models that can be applied to the end-to-end drug discovery processes.
In other words, healthcare is the something else that Nvidia is doing.
From Blackwell to Biotech
Nvidia is making direct investments in biotech companies.
A few weeks back, the company disclosed a new $100 million investment in Recursion Pharmaceuticals Inc. (RXRX), an early-stage biopharmaceutical company that is using artificial intelligence to develop new treatments for various types of cancer.
Why would a big semiconductor company invest in a small biotech company?
Even three or four years ago, a story like this might have seemed a bit odd – somewhat like a timber company taking a stake in Lululemon Athletica Inc. (LULU). The potential synergies might have been difficult to imagine.
But drug development is one of the newest and most exciting aspects of AI… and AI requires specialty semiconductors and cutting-edge data-processing platforms like the ones Nvidia produces.
Nvidia is also collaborating with biopharma giant Amgen Inc. (AMGN). Together, the two companies are building out a Nvidia supercomputer to create genomics “foundation models” – models trained on massive datasets – that could help accelerate the drug-discovery process.
These new collaborations follow on the heels of a partnership Nvidia announced late last year with the Genentech unit at Roche Holding AG (RHHBY).
That partnership aims to discover and develop new medicines by integrating Genentech’s proprietary algorithms with Nvidia’s BioNeMo supercomputing platform.
Because BioNeMo will enable Genentech to optimize and accelerate its algorithmic models, the biotech company expects to improve its success rate and “turbocharge the discovery and design of therapeutics.”
Navigating the AI Mania
As evidenced by Nvidia’s latest biotech investments, and this week’s GTC conference, excitement around the game-changing potential of AI is at an all-time high.
Really, this very moment could be the best chance in our lifetimes to take advantage of the AI Revolution.
Talk about rock ’n’ roll.
So, if you’re invested in AI stocks today, please listen closely. And if you haven’t invested in a single AI stock, I urge you to listen even closer…
Investment manias like the one we’re seeing today often lead to growing wealth gaps, and I believe those who aren’t prepared for what’s about to happen could soon find themselves on the wrong side.
That’s why I’m calling for an AI Code Red.
A code red requires a rapid response – and that is exactly what’s required right now.
You see, AI has the potential to blow the wealth gap wide open. It’s possibly the biggest problem our country faces going forward.
However, I’m confident that my research can arm you with the information you need to land on the right side of the wealth gap.
Regards,
Eric Fry
