Nvidia $NVDA CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC on Thursday that memory supply is unlikely to outstrip demand by 2029, following a week of declines in memory stocks driven by worries over excess capacity and softer demand.
"One of the things that's really great about memory is that you can always use more of it," Huang said during an interview held alongside the GTC Berlin conference, according to CNBC. He said HBM, a form of RAM, will remain in use for many years. Huang added that Nvidia plans to keep using large amounts of LPDDR memory, the type found in cell phones, in data centers.
The selloff followed an Oct. 15 opinion piece from a South Korean outlet, which called on the government to get ready for the AI boom losing steam, according to CNBC. The column drew on two experts who predict that new supply will leave the memory sector a "red ocean" in 2029, according to CNBC's translation.
Memory is an essential building block in Nvidia's chips. An oversupply could depress prices and squeeze the profitability of memory makers such as SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron $MU, according to CNBC.
SpaceX and Tesla $TSLA CEO Elon Musk responded to the column by saying China "will be making a LOT of RAM in 2028," according to CNBC. The selloff also reflected an announcement from China's ChangXin Memory Technologies about a redesigned architecture with potential efficiency gains, according to CNBC. That deepened investors' worry that the company, known as CXMT, might win business away from SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron.
Asked whether Nvidia would partner with CXMT and use its memory, Huang said, "We're open-minded." He said, "We work with Chinese companies; just about the whole world works with Chinese companies in the supply chain somewhere."
Huang said China's progress in semiconductors accelerated because of U.S. regulations. "We've definitely accelerated China's initiatives, its nationalization of semiconductor manufacturing capabilities, and all of the industrial support that has been put into that sector," he said, according to CNBC. He said American tech firms stand ready to face challengers "from anybody."
The interview came a day after Huang told European businesses in a GTC Berlin keynote that "every company in Europe will become an AI company". AI stocks have slid for two weeks, and the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Index has had its longest run of consecutive declines since 2008.
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