Nvidia Introduces Lepton for AI Chip Marketplace

Nvidia has announced a new software platform called Lepton, which aims to create a marketplace for cloud-based artificial intelligence chips. This announcement was made during a keynote speech by CEO Jensen Huang at Computex in Taipei. Lepton will enable cloud computing companies to sell GPU capacity in a centralized location, simplifying the process of finding available chips, which has been described as "very manual" by Nvidia cloud vice president Alexis Bjorlin.

The platform will feature participation from several emerging cloud players, known as "neoclouds," such as CoreWeave and Nebius Group, along with other firms like Crusoe, Firmus, Foxconn, GMI Cloud, Lambda, Nscale, SoftBank Corp, and Yotta Data Services. Notably, major cloud providers like Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Google are not yet part of the Lepton partner list, though the system is designed to accommodate them if they choose to join.

Lepton will eventually allow developers to search for Nvidia chips in specific countries to meet data storage requirements and enable companies that already own Nvidia chips to find additional capacity more seamlessly. This initiative is expected to enhance the ecosystem's growth and development by providing global and new cloud providers access to Nvidia's developer ecosystem.