Nvidia CEO Says Power-Saving Optical Chip Tech Will Need to Wait for Wider Use 

The stage is seen after a keynote session at the SAP Center in San Jose, California, on March 18, 2025. (AFP)
The stage is seen after a keynote session at the SAP Center in San Jose, California, on March 18, 2025. (AFP)
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Nvidia CEO Says Power-Saving Optical Chip Tech Will Need to Wait for Wider Use 

The stage is seen after a keynote session at the SAP Center in San Jose, California, on March 18, 2025. (AFP)
The stage is seen after a keynote session at the SAP Center in San Jose, California, on March 18, 2025. (AFP)

A promising new chip technology that aims to cut energy usage is not yet reliable enough for use in Nvidia's flagship graphics processing units (GPUs), Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang said Tuesday.

Co-packaged optics, as the emerging technology is called, uses beams of laser light to send information on fiber optic cables between chips, making connections faster and with superior energy efficiency to those through traditional copper cables.

During a keynote address to Nvidia's annual developer conference at a packed hockey stadium in San Jose, California on Tuesday, Huang said his company would use the co-packaged optical technology in two new networking chips that sit in switches on top of its servers, saying the technology would make the chips three and a half times more energy efficient than their predecessors.

The switch chips will come out later this year and into 2026 in a small but significant step toward advancing the technology.

But Huang told a group of journalists after his speech that while Nvidia examined using it more widely in its flagship GPU chips it had no current plans to do so, because traditional copper connections were "orders of magnitude" more reliable than today's co-packaged optical connections.

"That's not worth it," Huang said of using optical connections directly between GPUs. "We keep playing with that equation. Copper is far better."

Huang said that he was focused on providing a reliable product roadmap that Nvidia's customers, such as OpenAI and Oracle, could prepare for.

"In a couple years, several hundred billion dollars of AI infrastructure is going to get laid down, and so you've got the budget approved. You got the power approved. You got the land built," Huang said. "What are you willing to scale up to several hundred billion dollars right now?"

Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors have pinned their hopes on the optics technology, which they believe will be central to building ever-larger computers for AI systems, which Huang said on Tuesday would still be necessary even after advances by companies like DeepSeek because AI systems would need more computing power to think through their answers.

Startups such as Ayar Labs, Lightmatter and Celestial AI have raised hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital - some of it from Nvidia itself - to try and put co-packaged optical connections directly onto AI chips. Lightmatter and Celestial AI are both targeting public offerings.

Copper connections are cheap and fast, but can only carry data a few meters at most. While that might seem trivial, it has had a huge impact on Nvidia's product lineup over the past half decade.

Nvidia's current flagship product contains 72 of its chips in a single server, consuming 120 kilowatts of electricity and generating so much heat that it requires a liquid cooling system similar to that of a car engine. The flagship server unveiled on Tuesday for release in 2027 will pack hundreds of its Vera Rubin Ultra Chips into a single rack and will consume 600 kilowatts of power.

Cramming more than double the number of chips into the same space over two years will require massive feats of engineering from Nvidia and its partners. Those feats are driven by the fact that AI computing work requires moving a lot of data back and forth between chips, and Nvidia is trying to keep as many chips as it can within the relatively short reach of copper connections.

Mark Wade, the CEO of Ayar Labs, which has received venture backing from Nvidia, said the chip industry was still navigating how to manufacture co-packaged optics at lower costs and with higher reliability. While the transition may not come until 2028 or beyond, Wade said, the chip industry will have little choice but to ditch copper if it wants to keep building bigger and bigger servers.

"Just look at the power consumption going up and up on racks with electrical connections," Wade told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of Nvidia's conference. "Optics is the only technology that gets you off of that train."



Impostor Uses AI to Impersonate Rubio and Contact Foreign and US Officials

Secretary of State Marco Rubio attends a signing ceremony for a peace agreement between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo at the State Department, June 27, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio attends a signing ceremony for a peace agreement between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo at the State Department, June 27, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
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Impostor Uses AI to Impersonate Rubio and Contact Foreign and US Officials

Secretary of State Marco Rubio attends a signing ceremony for a peace agreement between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo at the State Department, June 27, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
Secretary of State Marco Rubio attends a signing ceremony for a peace agreement between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo at the State Department, June 27, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

The State Department is warning US diplomats of attempts to impersonate Secretary of State Marco Rubio and possibly other officials using technology driven by artificial intelligence, according to two senior officials and a cable sent last week to all embassies and consulates.

The warning came after the department discovered that an impostor posing as Rubio had attempted to reach out to at least three foreign ministers, a US senator and a governor, according to the July 3 cable, which was first reported by The Washington Post.

The recipients of the scam messages, which were sent by text, Signal and voice mail, were not identified in the cable, a copy of which was shared with The Associated Press.

“The State Department is aware of this incident and is currently investigating the matter,” it said. “The department takes seriously its responsibility to safeguard its information and continuously takes steps to improve the department’s cybersecurity posture to prevent future incidents.”

It declined to comment further due to “security reasons” and the ongoing investigation.

One of the officials said the hoaxes had been unsuccessful and “not very sophisticated.” Nonetheless, the second official said the department deemed it “prudent” to advise all employees and foreign governments, particularly as efforts by foreign actors to compromise information security increase.

The officials were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

“There is no direct cyber threat to the department from this campaign, but information shared with a third party could be exposed if targeted individuals are compromised,” the cable said.

The FBI warned in a public service announcement this past spring of a “malicious text and voice messaging campaign” in which unidentified “malicious actors” have been impersonating senior US government officials.

The scheme, according to the FBI, has relied on text messages and AI-generated voice messages that purport to come from a senior US official and that aim to dupe other government officials as well as the victim’s associates and contacts.

It is the second high-level Trump administration official to face such AI-driven impersonation.

The government was investigating after elected officials, business executives and other prominent figures received messages from someone impersonating President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles. Text messages and phone calls went out from someone who seemed to have gained access to the contacts in Wiles’ personal cellphone, The Wall Street Journal reported in May.

Some of those who received calls heard a voice that sounded like Wiles, which may have been generated by artificial intelligence, according to the newspaper. The messages and calls were not coming from Wiles’ number, the report said.