LAS VEGAS (AP) -- In a packed Las Vegas arena, Nvidia founder Jensen Huang stood on stage and marveled over the crisp real-time computer graphics displayed on the screen behind him. He watched as a dark-haired woman walked through ornate gilded double doors and took in the rays of light that poured in through stained glass windows.
"The amount of geometry that you saw was absolutely insane," Huang told an audience of thousands at CES 2025 Monday night. "It would have been impossible without artificial intelligence."
The chipmaker and AI darling unveiled its GeForce RTX 50 Series desktop and laptop GPUs -- its most advanced consumer graphics processor units for gamers, creators and developers. The tech is designed for use on both desktop and laptop computers.
Ahead of Huang's speech, Nvidia stock climbed 3.4% to top its record set in November. Nvidia and other AI stocks keep climbing even as criticism rises that their stock prices have already shot too high, too fast. Despite worries about a potential bubble, the industry continues to talk up its potential.
Huang said the GPUs, which use the company's next-generation artificial intelligence chip Blackwell, can deliver breakthroughs in AI-driven rendering.
"Blackwell, the engine of AI, has arrived for PC gamers, developers and creatives," Huang said, adding that Blackwell "is the most significant computer graphics innovation since we introduced programmable shading 25 years ago." Blackwell technology is now in full production, he said.
Building on the tech Nvidia released 25 years ago, the company announced that it would also introduce "RTX Neural Shaders," which use AI to help render game characters in deep detail - a task that's notoriously tricky because people can easily spot a small error on digital humans.
Huang said Nvidia is also introducing a new suite of technologies that enable "autonomous characters" to perceive, plan and act like human players. Those characters can help players plan strategies or adapt tactics to challenge players and create more dynamic battles.
In addition to Nvidia, tech giants such as AMD, Google and Samsung are at CES 2025 to unveil artificial intelligence tools aimed at helping both content creators and consumers alike in their quest for entertainment.
