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Nvidia Escalates CPU Push Against Intel and AMD as AI Workloads Evolve

Jensen Huang pointed to rising agentic AI workloads that favor CPUs for sequential, memory‑heavy tasks.

Jensen Huang, president/CEO of Nvidia, speaks during a Siemens keynote at CES 2026, an annual consumer electronics trade show, in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. January 6, 2026.  REUTERS/Steve Marcus/File Photo

Overview

  • On its earnings call, Nvidia said it will aggressively expand data‑center CPU deployments and signaled confidence that its presence could grow into one of the world’s largest CPU businesses.
  • Nvidia’s Grace and Vera chips, introduced in 2023, are framed as high‑throughput CPUs built for data‑intensive operations rather than general‑purpose flexibility.
  • Meta agreed to buy Nvidia CPUs on a standalone basis, while AMD separately announced a Meta CPU deal, underscoring a widening supplier contest for AI data‑center build‑outs.
  • Nvidia highlighted its NVL72 system configuration of 36 CPUs and 72 GPUs, with analysts expecting some agentic workloads to shift toward a 1:1 ratio or even CPU‑only setups.
  • Huang emphasized an architectural path that minimizes chiplet fragmentation to maximize data access and said more CPU roadmap details will be disclosed at next month’s developer conference in Silicon Valley.