NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone. Wishing you a very happy new year, and welcome to Inception program onboarding webinar. [Operator Instructions]. And towards the end of session, please fill the feedback survey form so that we can get your insights and incorporate in our future sessions. Okay. So let me take you to the agenda for today. As you can see, the program, this session is all about to talk about how best you can navigate the Inception portal, what are the benefits in place and how best you can leverage those benefits, right? And towards the end of the session, we'll have a Q&A wherein we'll be happy to answer your question. Along with me, I also have Arundhati Banerjee. She is the Inception Partner Manager for India and Southeast Asia. So she will also help during the Q&A session for today. Now before we move on, let me quickly brief you about the NVIDIA's tech stack and what benefits are in place, and then we'll talk about the Inception portal. So NVIDIA is built like a computing platform or a neural network. In 4 layers, like hardware. As you can see, there's a GPU, CPU and DPU, then comes the system software, which is RTX and CUDA and then comes the platform, which is NVIDIA HPC, high-performance computing, NVIDIA artificial intelligence, and NVIDIA Omniverse. And then we have application frameworks. As you can see, like MONAI is for health tech, Riva is for speech, DRIVE is for automobile, ISAAC is for robotics, and each layer is open to computer makers, service providers and developers to integrate into their offerings, however best you can. Now going forward, we recognize that tech startups today face unique and difficult challenges. That's where NVIDIA's position as a global leader in artificial intelligence makes us uniquely able to help you address these challenges. That's what the Inception Program were designed to do. We give you technical resources and discounts to build your products and get to market quickly, and we also help members with technical guidance to support scale faster. Now we want to help you build and get to market faster. So we provide the Inception members with free credits. The first one, as you can see, is the credits from Deep Learning Institute, wherein your technical team developers can go through a lot of courses, training programs and sessions, and there are also instructor-led workshops, which your team can go and build new skills. Then we also help you with preferred pricing on almost all the NVIDIA hardware and software, wherein you can build the technology, the latest of -- with the NVIDIA technology. You also get free cloud credits from our CSP, which is currently AWS, Amazon Web Services, so that you can access high-performance computing anytime anywhere, and you get up to $100,000 of cloud credits from AWS. And then you also have access to massive collection of developer tools like pretrained models, optimized software libraries or also there like TensorRT and Triton Inference Server and so on and so forth. Next is we also offer opportunities for increased brand awareness and exposure to VC investors to help accelerate your company's growth. Here are the names of few prominent VCs and we currently have more than 600 plus VCs in our VC alliance globally. I'll talk more about the brand awareness and how you can use the Inception logo and press release templates towards the later part of the presentation. You also get an opportunity to promote your solution on the accelerated app catalog. The NVIDIA app catalog features hundreds of GPU-accelerated solutions developed by our technology partners for AI, data science, design and other domains. Enterprise customers rely on the apps catalog to find tools that address unique business challenges across a range of industries and use cases. The platform also serves as a trusted source for investors and industry analysts exploring the latest disruptive technologies. You can simply scan the code, which is here the QR code, and you can submit your application. We also help you to drive awareness through various events. There are various events which NVIDIA host, and we also do with other partners, the bigger ones like GTC, which is coming up, I'll talk about more in the later slides. So you get speaking opportunities and booth presence and much more to wherein you can drive the awareness about your product, about your start-up. And we also help you with co-marketing, blog post. So you also get opportunity to post on social media. You can #inception, tag NVIDIAAI. And these are a few examples of how NVIDIA then further repost -- reshare your post and you get more visibility. Okay. Cool. So that's pretty much about brief about the benefits part of it. Now let's get into the NVIDIA Inception portal. So as all of you are already part of the Inception, you might have already received your credential and at least you might have already logged into the portal. Now this is how the portal looks like when you log in the Inception portal page, this is the home page. As you can see, there's a welcome notice there, then you can see the request benefit tab and then you can see the information, which is about your company information you can see. Now what all you can do in this portal, you can update your company profile. We kind of -- we would like you to update your profile in every 6 months. It's better if you like update in every -- like every month or in a quarter, but at least in 6 months you should update your profile. You can request benefit from the Inception portal, that's another, I think, through the portal, what you can do. You can review whatever benefits you have previously requested whether they are approved, not approved, what's the status of your benefits currently. And you can also access the developer and self-serve marketing resources. And you can also view what all upcoming events are coming in, what are the resources available and the opportunities available, right? So let me quickly go through the some of them. And before I move on, the idea of updating our profile is because your Inception profile, our tech teams, the DevRes and other teams also look at these opportunities. So what happens if you -- if your profile is up to date, you also get some of the opportunities for early access to some of the programs. You also get personalized recommendation. So it's beneficial for you if you update your profile in at least in every 6 months. Okay. Now when you click on Events, Benefits and Recent News section, this page will appear wherein you can see the latest offerings and the latest pricing, discounted pricing information. So as you can see, currently, like NVIDIA L40 GPU ,Grace Hopper, DGX, so these are the latest price list. Then you can -- once you click on request benefit, it will redirect you to the another page where you can request, I'll show you in the next slide. And then there is also, as you can see in the bottom, there's, need technical assistance, start here, right? When you click on this slide, it will redirect you to the developer forum. You can select your preferred industrial or the industry which you are working on, and you can sign in for your developer account and start asking the question, all the technical questions, queries you can ask through the developer forum. And please make sure that you #inception so that it goes to the relevant folks and you get the revert at the -- like quickly, right? So that's important. Now this is a page which is about the benefits. As you can see, there are a lot of benefits listed here. I'll go one by one and to just ensure you what it is about. The first one is Deep Learning development courses for yourself and your development team, DLI. So this is about the DLI courses, which -- all the training programs, these workshop, instructor-led workshop, which your technical team can leverage. What you have to do is you can click on it, submit the request. We will give you a code, which you can then further use it on the DLI website, and you can use the courses, right? So currently, like the -- I would say the limit is we provide 20 DLI course in every 6 months per startup, right? So there's a huge, I think, opportunity for you and your development team, technical team to go through these courses and learn and leverage. The next one is GPU instances in the cloud with our partners, cloud credit. So this is nothing but the AWS cloud credits. When you click on it, maybe I go to the next slide and show you. So this is how it looks like. GPU instances, as you can see, you have to select the cloud service provider, which will be AWS currently. You can fill in your e-mail ID and you can submit the request. Now in the AWS, there are 3 categories. The credits are one is $10,000, $25,000, and $100,000. So ideally, you should begin with $10,000 and then $25,000 and then $100,000, because $10,000 anyways being part of the program, we'll approve it. But for $25,000 and $100,000, there are some conditions. We look at what kind of solutions you are on? Are you using NVIDIA tech stack? Are you using NVIDIA SDKs or any other like GPUs and other products? And then we kind of approve it. For $100,000 it is mandatory that you have to be on NVIDIA tech stack, like you have to be using SDKs and so on. So also these credits, there's one important point. There's a duration for these credits. So there is a 2-year duration for $10,000 and $25,000 credits and 1-year duration for $100,000 credits. So what it means is if you -- like if you apply for credits today, and it gets approved and you don't use it, like you will just lose those credits, right? So it will expire. So the idea is that you first apply for $10,000 credits, $25,000 credits because the duration is anyways for 2 years and you can use it. And then you apply for $100,000, the remaining $75,000, you will get it. And accordingly, you can choose it, right? And there's also 1 year business support for all the credits from Amazon, right? So this is about the AWS. Now coming to the next one is the Inception preferred pricing on GPUs, GPU Rebates. So again, once you click on it, what you will see, you will see a list of all the products, which is currently available. You can select it. You can, for example, L4 if you are selecting, you can select the quantity, maybe 4, 2, 8 and then you can submit the request. Once the request come to us, once we approve it, we'll connect you with our preferred partner and distributors, and they will further share the quotation with you, share the more information, the technical information with you. And they might also tell you that if certain product is not available, which is currently available and what best you can get, what's the time duration and all of that, right? So that's how the GPU rebate works. The next one is Inception Capital Connect, Investment Introduction. Now this is again for all the Inception members. If you're looking to raise funding, please submit this request with your latest pitch deck, and once it comes to us, once we approve it, if we need any changes in the pitch deck, we'll let you know that we modify update in the page deck. And then once we approve it, it goes to all the VCs and they can review your pitch deck. And if they are interested, they can directly start reach out to you and ask more questions and take the conversation forward, right? So this is again a benefit which you can utilize if you're looking to raise funds. The other one is, like as you can see, the last one is enterprise software discounts. So that is for the software discount. So if you're looking for Riva Enterprise discount, you can -- again, it's the same way you can request it and we will further take it forward. Once we'll approve it, we'll connect you with the team and they can help you out with the next steps, right? So these are the main, I would say, the discounting part of it, like with respect to the inception portal, which you can like immediately start. Most of you have already, like, I think, leverage the AWS and some of the credits. But yes, you can also look for the other parts of it. Now going to the next slide. Now this is how the last page or the bottom page of the Inception portal looks like. As you can see, there's a press release template, which is already approved template. You can just download it and you can start using it. If you need any like changes, modification in the press release, you can write to us at inceptionprogram@nvidia.com. We will loop in the legal team, and they can further help you with the modification. And once they approve it, you can start using the template. There is social media template also available, which you can use on social media, you can tag Inception, tag NVIDIAAI. And most of the -- like the post goes to the relevant teams, they review it and they can further repost it, reshare it as well. Website badges, so you can use NVIDIA Inception logo on your website. You can write, selected in the Inception program or part of NVIDIA Inception program and use NVIDIA Inception logo. Please don't use NVIDIA logo because we have seen in the past some of the start-ups are using NVIDIA logo, that's not correct. You can use NVIDIA Inception logo on the website, but not NVIDIA logo. The next part is, as you can see, there are resources available as per industry. So if you are in like healthcare start-up, you can go to that -- like see the healthcare resources, if it's a retail or fintech start-up, you can see the financial resources. And also, it's like there are a lot of other resources like once you click on view all industry, you will get to know, there are a lot of other industries also. And you can see and you can see like what's happening in that industry. What are the latest advancement and so on and so forth, right? So I think that's pretty much about the Inception portal. We'll be happy to answer all your questions if you have like -- and if you are not able to access your portal, if there is any like you forgot your password, there's an option to reset your password. If still it doesn't work please write to us at InceptionProgram@nvidia.com, we'll be happy to help you out and you can like start accessing the portal. Now going forward, let me quickly also tell you about some of the other products and offerings which NVIDIA has, which you can leverage, right? So coming to the developer program, this already I have told about the developer forum. So let me again quickly tell you about this. So this is an online space devoted to your needs with access to free SDKs, there are 150-plus SDKs available, technical documentations are there, peer and domain expert help, information on the right hardware to tackle the biggest challenges. So what you have to do is you can just ask all your technical queries like register for developer forum, and you can ask your technical queries questions, just #inception so that it goes to the right people and you get a quick revert on that. The next one, I want to share about NVIDIA NGC. This is a portal of enterprise services, software management tools and support for end-to-end AI and digital twin work loads. You can bring your solutions to market faster with fully managed services or take advantage of performance optimized software to build and deploy solutions on your preferred cloud on-prem and edge systems. The other thing is I want to share about NVIDIA DGX. NVIDIA DGX Cloud is an AI training as a service platform, offering a serverless experience for enterprise developers that is optimized for generative AI. And most of you already know about NVIDIA LaunchPad. Just wanted to share again here. It's a free program that provides immediate short-term access to necessary hardware, software and data to experience end-to-end solution workflows in the areas of AI, data science, 3D design collaboration and simulation. The hands-on Labs on LaunchPad, which are delivered on private accelerated compute infrastructure, help developers, designers and IT professionals to further speed up the creation and deployment of modern data-intensive application. And lastly, I would like to share about the GTC, which is coming up in March this year. And this time, the GTC is happening in U.S. as well in person. So if you have not registered yet, please scan this code and you can register to attend it either online or offline. If you are attending it offline, you also get a chance -- the discount is there currently going on, which is till Feb 7, you can directly get 25% off on the registration physically, if you are attending. And virtually, it's -- anyway it's free. So all of you can attend it definitely and also ask your developers, your technical team to attend these sessions because there will be more than 600 sessions happening this year and your team -- tech team can definitely leverage and benefit out of it. So I think that's on the presentation side, broadly. Now I would open it for Q&A. I think we already got a few questions here. But feel free to type your question in the chat, and we'll be happy to answer. And for any further, like after the session, if you are -- if you need any further assistance, please e-mail us at InceptionProgram@nvidia.com, and we'll be happy to help you out. And also, as I said, please join developer forum. There are 150-plus SDKs available. You can ask all the technical questions over there, and you can get that -- like access to all these training programs and all of that, right?

So -- okay. So let's go with the Q&A part. I think -- Okay. So I'll quickly read out the question and maybe myself or Arundhati can answer those questions. So the one question which is currently it's here is can I get the guide on how to get AWS credits? So as I mentioned in the -- I think in the presentation, the -- getting the credits is very easy. Maybe what I'll do is I quickly go to that slide again and show you how to access the credits. So if you can see, you have to select GPU Instances in the cloud with our partner, which is Cloud Credits, and here, you can see all the information. It's also mentioned the phases like start phase, grow phase and scale phase, which is like $10,000, $25,000, and $100,000. And you can select $10,000 in the beginning. Once you are near exhausting it, you can then further request for $25,000 and then later on, you can request for $100,000, right? So it's pretty simple. You have to just select like the cloud service provider, which is currently it's only AWS, your e-mail ID and submit the request better. That's the only process to kind of request credits. And then further, once the credit gets approved, you will receive an e-mail from us that your credits are approved, and this is the code which you can further use it on the AWS activate site. So the next steps and everything is being shared over e-mail so that you can quickly go and apply and you can get those credits, okay? So I think that question is answered. Let me go to the other questions, which is about -- Okay. So there is one question which says that we you have already consumed 2,500 credits in the past few months and may exhaust all credit. So is there a way we can get more credit? So -- right, so as I said, you can apply for more credits if you have consumed 2,500 and you can apply for $25,000 credits now. And you can obviously like -- you can also write like what kind of solutions you are using like NVIDIA tech stack you are using or in future, you want to use some of the SDKs or what it is because that is really important to approve $25,000 and $100,000 credit. So please mention what's your current tech stack. Okay. The other question is when can I access the list of investors, VC associated with Inception Capital Connect? Okay. So there is no list of all the VCs. We can't disclose the list of all 600-plus VCs, which is there with us. On the website, you can always see that we have listed the prominent ones, the major VCs, which is part of our program, but we can't share the list of all the VCs. So the best way is you request the Capital Connect this benefit request. And then we can, like once we review your profile, your pitch deck. And then once you -- your -- like your request gets approved, it will automatically available to the VCs. Okay. I think this question is replied. Okay. There is one question. I would like to know how we publish our products on app catalog? So, again, I think I already shared the -- let me -- maybe I'll share that link again here and maybe post the presentation also, we'll share like how you can access. So you can quickly scan this code and you can submit your application. You can also write to us and we will share the further like details about the app catalog and what's the process. But this is something which -- it's a simple form, which you can fill it up and it goes for review. Okay, the other one is: We are planning to deploy our AI solution via appliance to our customers on premise, and we would like to develop it on DGX services, what's the approach to start prototype with NVIDIA on this? So as I mentioned, all these technical queries, it's -- I think it's the best way to use the developer forum to ask all these technical questions because the relevant folks, they can answer all these questions. And Arundhati you want to take a few questions, meanwhile, if...

Yes, sure.

I am just going through all the chat questions.

So do you guys provide any technical point of contact for individual startups so that we can implement the NVIDIA SDKs to our system smoothly or how the technical guidance work on implementing the SDKs? Yes, we do provide. So please do reach out. Like the best way is to mail myself or Prateek, and then we will get you going from there. We'll understand your use case and then accordingly connect you to the relevant person. Understanding your current scope of work and also what you are currently on, like if you need a migration that refers to a different team. So we have to understand the ground reality first. So please reach out to us, and we'll be more than happy to assist you. Okay, how to use NVIDIA badge and not Inception badge on website and social media? As part of Inception program, you have to use NVIDIA Inception badge and not NVIDIA badge. So NVIDIA badge typically gets used only when like NVIDIA itself as an entity is partnering or sponsoring any event or stuff like that. But otherwise, it's always NVIDIA Inception badge that has to go in the application. There's no other way because every program has its own badge. So overall, none of the programs actually allows you to use the NVIDIA badge directly. I want to know more about pre-trained models and how can I use them? So there's a website, let us share that. So where already the pretrained models that has been trained on NVIDIA is already listed. So you can check out like which is of interest for you and accordingly take help for the same. Let me paste this link soon. So I'll keep this question. How developer forum works, I mean, specific to our solution or domain? So once you log into your developer forum, you can post a question there. When you are posting the question, you can make relevant hashtags for a particular domain, for a particular solution. And since you come from NVIDIA Inception. In that way, it will automatically get bucketed in the relevant -- to the relevant person and they will come back with the answer for the same. Also regarding pretrained models for SDK or API, how to get access for free for building solutions? So everything is free actually. So for the SDKs, you have to just go to the respective site. Say, for example, if you want to use NVIDIA DeepStream, go to NVIDIA DeepStream, download it and you can get going from there. So there's nothing like you have to get it, you have to come and then get free access for it. But however, when you are using it for enterprise, you can go to the same request benefit section, say, for example, you will find the NVIDIA Riva Enterprise and then you request for the benefits for that in production so that we can give you discounts on the same and then accordingly, you can take it to production. But however, most of them are free. We are an OEM building turnkey AI cloud appliance. How do I get a rebate on the NVIDIA card purchase from the reseller or distributor? What is the process to avail the benefit for preferred pricing? So once again, you go to the request benefit side, you will already see the list of cards, which are already listed there, and we'll give you the price. The pricing will also be listed there. So we will approve the pricing for you and also get you connected to the reseller or distributor. Once they see -- once we connect the rebate automatically applies for you and you can purchase it from there at the discounted price. How to get GPU cloud for training models? Is there any limit for credits? Yes. So as Prateek has mentioned already, we have 3 tiers, $10,000, $25,000 and $100,000. $10,000 when -- for all the 3 actually, you have to apply from the request benefits tab in the Inception portal. Make sure your profile is updated every 6 months, else you will not be able to request benefits. So once you update your profile, you go for requesting benefits, you will see the cloud credits as one of the options. You will see the radio button for it. Once you select that, you will be able to select the amount of cloud credits. Typically, we'll start with $10,000 and then $25,000 and then $100,000. As Prateek mentioned, $10,000 is given to everyone so that they can try out offerings. For $25,000 and $100,000 we do check like whether you are on the NVIDIA platform and how you are going to leverage it. So please be conscious when you were raising the request because there's a expiry date to the credits, for $10,000 and $25,000 it's 2 years, for $100,000 it's 1 year.

There is one question. I think just a follow-up on that. So someone is asking, can we get $100,000 more if we have already used $100,000 credits? So that's not possible. The maximum limit is $100,000, which is the part of like partnership we had with AWS. So there's no -- nothing beyond $100,000 you can get from the Inception program. And there is one more question on the credit part. So what about Azure cloud credit? So as of now, we -- the partnership is only with AWS. Once we have a partnership with Azure or with other cloud service providers, we'll share and we'll let you know -- everyone know so you can start utilizing it. But currently, it's only AWS.

Right. Okay. So I'll take some more questions. So I see like there's a question, we are planning to deploy our AI solutions via an appliance to our customers on-premises and we'd like to develop it on DGX devices. What's the process to start a prototype with NVIDIA on this? Please drop us a mail to NVIDIA Inception. Also to individually to me and Prateek, anyone. You will be having those -- already -- if you have already had a communication channel with us, and we will be more than happy to get you connected to the relevant people with whom you can start working. Do we have to current -- do we have to be currently using the NVIDIA tools for the $100,000 application? Or is it possible to migrate the current AI models in the NVIDIA infrastructure? You can migrate first and then apply for the $100,000 applications. Typically, we would need you to be on NVIDIA platform to issue that $100,000 cloud credits. Does NVIDIA on their own, independent of VCs, offered any seed funding? So NVentures do exist, but however, it depends on a case-to-case basis. So there is no direct answer to this particular question. So please do reach out and we'll see. Okay. Let's go to some few other questions. Please provide a list of NVIDIA programs on AWS Marketplace, which can be used within AWS credits? So we give you AWS credits and anything and everything can be used with AWS credits. We don't give you credit saying that, okay, you can use only so and so resources and remaining everything is blocked for you. So there's nothing like that. Can we use ACE at the moment? Yes, you can. So there is a website which is there for ACE and the -- if you're worrying -- like if others are thinking what it is ACE, ACE is our custom cloud engine, so you can certainly use that. Yes. Any separate charges...

So there's one question about -- Yes, yes, go ahead. I was just answering that. So yes, so there is no charges for the Inception program. It's completely free. There is no equity involved. There's no program fees involved. It's a completely free program.

Then we have -- when we apply for the scale credits, we are approaching the end of grow, how long do they last? We spend about $2,000 per month. Well, so the credits $10,000, and $25,000 lasts for 2 years, $100,000 lasts based on the monthly cloud spend, but this is the expiration date for the credits. So accordingly, you should check when you need it the most and then apply for it. We have our product on Responsible AI. We explored NVIDIA/NeMo Guardrails. We have covered more wider use cases in our product, how can we collaborate with NVIDIA and build the next-gen Responsible AI suite? Please reach out to the NVIDIA Inception ID, which you can see the email ID here, InceptionProgram@nvidia.com and accordingly, we can -- since it's an individual case, we'll see what best we can do for it. Okay. For the cloud credits, it can be multiple projects -- It can be for multiple projects, right? It can be for multiple projects provided you are on the -- you are using the same e-mail for all the projects in AWS because we are going to issue the credits against e-mail ID, which is registered in NVIDIA Inception, not against 3 different e-mail IDs. Could we use AWS credits for other instances as well? Or is it just for using NVIDIA GPU instances? It's AWS credit. It's up to you how you use them. Pertaining to pretrained models and their deployment, the deployment has to be on AWS or there is some possibility for deploying them directly with NVIDIA? Well, you can deploy it on AWS, GCP, Azure, any one of them, but we offer only AWS credits. We don't give any -- we don't promote any NVIDIA cloud. So it's typically, you have to go through any of the hyperscalers or any of the other cloud service providers that you must be knowing who have already have a GPU instance created on their system. Keep your questions coming in. Okay. Just wanted to check how to apply for this program for an entity based out [ Bernin ], whether we need to reach out to you? Or is there a separate team for Middle East? Well, it's one team like it's a global program that we are all working into. So the best way is you can reach out to us or you can reach out to the InceptionProgram@nvidia.com, and accordingly, the person who is there in your zone or in your geography, would reach out to you. Or else we can also get you connected. Or otherwise, we can even work with you, not a problem. Thank you.

There's a question regarding the -- Yes, there's a question regarding refresh status like under the Inception program, what does that mean? So once you like update your -- like your application like once you apply for -- already, you have applied for Inception. Now we expect you to update your profile in every 6 months at least. You can update with respect to the fund raise or with respect to the team size or with respect to the latest technology you are using. So there are multiple fields wherein you can update, but we expect you to refresh your profile. Otherwise, what will happen -- the profile will be showing as refresh pending, and you will not be able to utilize any of these benefits, the Inception program benefit. So it will not -- when you log in, it will not show you any benefit. Will ask you first to refresh the profile and then it will start showing you the benefits. So always make your profile up to date. 6 months is like our mandate, but you can refresh in every month also or every quarterly also, that's also fine. So it's good for you to keep it up to date, yes.

Great. So we'll -- I just posted the link for the pretrained models because I kept that question open. So hopefully, that is closed now. We have a question, we are looking to transition from OpenAI to NVIDIA, where should we start? Do you mean in the large language models? If so, like they can be only in the large language models is what I understand. Please reach out to us, just drop us a mail, and that should be a good starting point and we can get you connected and we can help you like exactly what should be the steps for you. We are checking for more questions. We have a lot of them still. Are we eligible for benefits if we are part of other corporate incubator programs? Yes. So that doesn't stop you from getting the benefits. Rather, we continue to support as part of NVIDIA Inception till you are 10 years of old. So, yes. Can I raise...

So there's another question wherein -- Yes. Okay. I'll take that. So can I request benefit for a different e-mail that is registered with AWS? So that won't be possible. Like we encourage you to request the benefit with the same e-mail ID which is registered with the Inception program because otherwise, it will be a mismatch. And after we approve it, it goes to AWS also. And then if they don't find that the same e-mail ID has been registered, then they will reject the credits. So use the same e-mail ID which you have registered with the inception program to apply for AWS credits.