Britain's King Charles III (L) walks with DeepMind's Demis Hassabis
Britain's King Charles III (L) walks with DeepMind's Demis Hassabis (C) and Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang (R) to attend a conference of leaders from the artificial intelligence (AI) sector and government at Dumfries House in Cumnock, Scotland on September 17, 2026. The king was to expected to urge tech giants to ensure that artificial intelligence is geared to serve humanity and that mankind does "not lose control".

Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA) chief executive Jensen Huang said on September 17 that he expected the number of chips sold by the company next year to be double this year's figure. He made the remarks to reporters while attending a closed-door AI summit in Scotland convened by King Charles III.

Huang said AI was delivering substantial benefits to different industries and economies. “Almost every country where we do business wants to invest in AI,” he said.

“Double” refers to units, not revenue. Nvidia does not disclose its total chip shipments. According to CNBC, its products include data-centre GPUs, such as the Blackwell and Rubin series, as well as CPUs, networking chips, optical communications chips, laptop chips, Jetson chips for robots and vehicles, and chips used in Nintendo's Switch 2. A doubling in unit sales therefore cannot be directly converted into a doubling of revenue. The periods covered by the two figures are also not exactly the same: Huang's reference to “next year” means 2027, while Nvidia's 2028 financial year runs from February 2027 to January 2028.

Nvidia reported on August 26 that revenue for the second quarter of its 2027 financial year, ended July 26, was US$96.2 billion, up 106 per cent year on year. The company guided for third-quarter revenue of about US$108 billion, plus or minus 2 per cent, and said the guidance did not include data-centre computing revenue from China. Chief financial officer Colette Kress said on the earnings call that revenue for the 2028 financial year, ending in January 2028, was expected to grow by about 70 per cent year on year. She said the forecast was constrained by supply. CNBC reported that the increase would amount to about US$673 billion.

Supply is the main constraint. On the August earnings call, Huang said the supply secured by the company was sufficient to support 70 per cent growth, but still fell short of demand. Kress said the supply-demand gap would persist at least until the end of that financial year. The Wall Street Journal reported last September that TSMC manufactures almost all of Nvidia's chips.

Background: last year's UK plan, with no known connection to the latest remarks. At the summit, Huang referred only generally to countries wanting to invest in AI, and English-language reports did not indicate that he named any specific project. A more concrete example was the AI infrastructure plan announced by the UK and US technology companies in September 2025. Nvidia said at the time that, together with partners including CoreWeave and Nscale, it could invest up to £11 billion (about US$15 billion), with the aim of deploying up to 120,000 Blackwell Ultra GPUs by the end of 2026. The first 23,040 GB300 GPUs for a supercomputer centre being built by Nscale and Microsoft in Loughton, near London, are expected to be delivered in the first quarter of 2027.

On competition, Huawei said at its Huawei Connect conference in Shanghai on September 17 that its Ascend 960DT chip was expected to launch in the first quarter of 2027, earlier than originally planned.

On AI regulation, Huang said AI companies had a responsibility to develop and thoroughly test their technology safely. “If the product is not safe, it should be held back and engineering development should continue,” he said. He also said governments could regulate different industries using existing laws rather than creating an entirely new regulatory framework. According to the Associated Press, other summit attendees included Google DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis, OpenAI chief financial officer Sarah Friar and a representative of Anthropic. In his opening address, the King described AI's development as both fascinating and a source of profound concern.

Market reaction: Nvidia shares rose more than 2 per cent on Thursday to about US$219, giving the company a market capitalisation of about US$5.3 trillion. In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Index rose 0.6 per cent to close at 24,750.78 on September 18, while the Hang Seng Tech Index gained 2.2 per cent, led by semiconductor and AI-related stocks. Sina Finance's market wrap cited Huang's remarks and Nebius's increase in GPU computing prices in its discussion of gains among semiconductor stocks. Lenovo Group (0992.HK) rose 9.5 per cent to close at HK$37.58. The 21st Century Business Herald said the stock had also risen on September 16 and 17, as the market focused on growth in its AI infrastructure business, and referred to a Morgan Stanley research report dated September 17.

The next test will come with Nvidia's third-quarter results, expected in November, and progress on mass production of the Vera Rubin platform.