Nvidia to sell Meta millions of chips in multiyear deal

Nvidia said on Tuesday it has signed a multiyear deal to sell Meta Platforms millions of its current and future artificial intelligence chips, including central processing units that compete with products from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices.

Nvidia did not disclose a value for the deal, but said it includes its current Blackwell chips as well as its forthcoming Rubin AI chips. It also includes standalone installations of its Grace and Vera central processors.

Nvidia introduced those central processors, based on technology from Arm Holdings, as companions to its AI chips starting in 2023. But Tuesday's announcement signaled that Nvidia aims to push those chips into emerging fields such as running AI agents, as well as into markets for processors used in everyday technical tasks such as running databases.

Nvidia's announcement also comes as Meta is developing its own AI chips and is in discussions with Google about using that company's Tensor Processing Unit chips, or TPUs, for AI work.

Ian Buck, the general manager of Nvidia's hyperscale and high-performance computing unit, said that Nvidia's Grace central processors have shown they can use half the power for some common tasks such as running databases, with further gains expected for the next generation, Vera.

While Nvidia has never disclosed its sales to Meta, it is widely believed to be among four customers that made up 61 percent of its revenue in its most recent fiscal quarter.