AI Agents Are the Next Big Thing, Says NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang

I just returned from NVIDIA’s GTC AI Conference in San Jose, California. This year’s event was completely sold out, with an estimated 20,000 investors, engineers and business leaders in attendance.

CEO Jensen Huang likes to call the annual get-together the “Super Bowl of AI,” and after seeing his keynote, I understand why.

Despite NVIDIA’s stock flashing a bearish “death cross”—its 50-day moving average slipped below the 200-day moving average for the first time since January 2023—the energy at the conference was electrifying. Every major industry was represented, from health care to defense, signaling that artificial intelligence (AI) is expanding at a white-knuckle clip.

NVIDIA Signals

During his approximately two-hour presentation (and he didn’t use notes!), Huang described a future where AI agents will transform entire industries, making businesses more efficient, aerospace and defense more advanced and markets more intelligent.

In other words, if you thought ChatGPT was impressive, you haven’t seen anything yet.

AI Agents: The Next Industrial Revolution?

Huang spoke extensively about “agentic AI,” or AI that doesn’t just retrieve data but perceives, reasons and acts on your behalf.

In his example, AI agents “can go to a website, interpret words and videos, maybe even play a video, learn from it, understand it—and then use that new knowledge to complete its task.”

To understand this better, imagine you work on Wall Street. An AI agent could scan earnings reports, build models and execute trades faster than a human could. In health care, AI agents will be able to diagnose diseases, assist in surgeries and manage hospital logistics—all with limited human supervision.

AI Agents

Perhaps the biggest impact will be in aerospace and defense. Huang made a bold prediction: “Everything that moves will be autonomous.”

This suggests a future with AI-powered drones, cybersecurity defense systems, battlefield robots and much more. The U.S. military is already testing AI systems that can independently identify threats and make tactical, split-second decisions in real-time.

As I shared with you last month, the global AI market in aerospace and defense is projected to surge from approximately $28 billion today to $65 billion by 2034, according to one research firm. That’s a solid 9.91% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). North America alone represents $10.43 billion of this market, and it’s growing even faster at 10.02% annually.

AI in aerospace