* Nvidia ( NVDA ) to showcase next-gen AI chip named Feynman

* Focus on Groq technology for inference computing

* Nvidia ( NVDA ) faces increased competition in AI chip market

By Stephen Nellis and Max A. Cherney

SAN JOSE, California, March 16 (Reuters) - Nvidia ( NVDA )

CEO Jensen Huang is set to detail the company's

hardware and software plans to a large crowd in San Jose,

California, at the company's annual developer conference on

Monday.

During a keynote address at a hockey arena with a capacity of

more than 18,000, Huang is expected to lay out how the top AI

chipmaker plans to adapt to a rapidly changing AI landscape.

Nvidia ( NVDA ), the world's most valuable listed company, with a market

capitalization of more than $4.3 trillion, is likely to detail a

next-generation AI chip called Feynman, named after American

physicist Richard Feynman, at the four-day conference. Huang is

also likely to talk about data centers, Nvidia's ( NVDA ) chip

programming software CUDA, digital assistants known as AI agents

and physical AI such as robots.

Another focus is likely to be Groq, a chip startup from which

Nvidia ( NVDA ) licensed technology for $17 billion in December. Groq

specializes in fast and cheap "inference" computing work, in

which an AI model takes what it has already learned and uses it

to answer a question or make a prediction in real time.

After spending hundreds of billions of dollars in recent

years on chips for training their AI models, companies such as

OpenAI, Anthropic and Facebook owner Meta Platforms ( META ) are

shifting toward serving hundreds of millions of users who are

tapping those AI systems. Nvidia ( NVDA ) faces greater competition in

the market for chips for inference-computing work than it does

for AI-training chips, and analysts expect the company to shore

up its defenses against rivals looking to regain market share

they lost to Nvidia ( NVDA ) in recent years.

Despite that increased competition, some of which is coming

from Nvidia's ( NVDA ) own customers designing their own chips, Nvidia ( NVDA )

remains central to the global AI ecosystem.

Nations such as Saudi Arabia are building custom AI systems for

their own populations using its chips, and it is one of the only

large U.S. companies that continues to release open-source AI

software, a growing field of competition between the U.S. and

China.

Huang's keynote is set for 11 a.m. Pacific Time (2 p.m.

Eastern Time/1800 GMT).