Nvidia, Google, Microsoft and dozens of other tech companies are descending on Las Vegas next week to showcase artificial intelligence tools they say will save doctors and nurses valuable time. 

Sunday marks the official start of a health-care technology conference called HLTH, which is expected to draw more than 12,000 industry leaders this year. CNBC will be on the ground. Based on the speaking agenda and announcements leading up to the conference, AI tools to conquer administrative burdens will be the star of this year’s show. 

Doctors and nurses are responsible for mountains of documentation as they work to keep up with patient records, interface with insurance companies and comply with regulators. Often, these tasks are painstakingly manual, in part because health data is siloed and stored across multiple vendors and formats. 

The daunting administrative workload is a major cause of burnout in the industry, and it’s part of the reason a nationwide shortage of 100,000 health-care workers is expected by 2028, according to consulting firm Mercer. Tech companies, eager to carve out a piece of a market that could top $6.8 trillion in spending by the decade’s end, argue that their generative AI tools can help.

Google, for instance, said it’s working to expand its health-care customer base by tackling administrative burden with AI.

On Thursday, the company announced the general availability of Vertex AI Search for Healthcare, which it introduced in a trial capacity during HLTH last year. Vertex AI Search for Healthcare allows developers to build tools to help doctors quickly search for information across disparate medical records, Google said. New features within Google’s Healthcare Data Engine, which helps organizations build the platforms they need to support generative AI, are also now available, the company said.

Google on Thursday released the results of a survey that said clinicians spend nearly 28 hours a week on administrative tasks. In the survey, 80% of providers said this clerical work takes away from their time with patients, and 91% said they feel positive about using AI to streamline these tasks. 

Similarly, Microsoft on Oct. 11 announced its collection of tools that aim to lessen clinicians’ administrative workload, including medical imaging models, a health-care agent service and an automated documentation solution for nurses, most of which are still in the early stages of development. 

Microsoft already offers an automated documentation tool for doctors through its subsidiary, Nuance Communications, which it acquired in a $16 billion deal in 2021. The tool, called DAX Copilot, uses AI to transcribe doctors’ visits with patients and turn them into clinical notes and summaries. Ideally, this means doctors don’t have to spend time typing out these notes themselves. 

Nurses and doctors complete different types of documentation during their shifts, so Microsoft said it’s building a separate tool for nurses that’s best suited to their workflows. 

AI scribe tools such as DAX Copilot have exploded in popularity this year, and Nuance’s competitors, such as Abridge, which has reportedly raised more than $460 million, and Suki, which has raised $165 million, will also be at the HLTH conference. 

Dr. Shiv Rao, the founder and CEO of Abridge, told CNBC in March that the rate at which the health-care industry has adopted this new form of clinical documentation feels “historic.” Abridge received a coveted investment from Nvidia’s venture capital arm that same month. 

Nvidia is also gearing up to address doctor and nurse workloads at HLTH. 

Kimberly Powell, the company’s vice president of health care, is delivering a keynote Monday that will explain how using generative AI will help health-care professionals “dedicate more time to patient care,” according to the conference’s website.

Nvidia’s graphics processing units, or GPUs, are used to create and deploy the models that power OpenAI’s ChatGPT and similar applications. As a result, Nvidia has been one of the primary beneficiaries of the AI boom. Nvidia shares are up more than 150% year to date, and the stock tripled last year. 

The company has been making steady inroads into the health-care sector in recent years, and it offers a range of AI tools across medical devices, drug discovery, genomics and medical imaging. Nvidia also announced expanded partnerships with companies such as Johnson & Johnson and GE HealthCare in March. 

While the health-care sector has historically been slow to adopt new technology, the buzz around administrative AI tools has been undeniable since ChatGPT exploded onto the scene two years ago. 

Even so, many health systems are still in the early stages of evaluating tools and vendors, and they’ll be making the rounds on the HLTH exhibition floor. Tech companies will have to prove they have the chops to tackle one of health care’s most complex problems. 

Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest producer of advanced chips, serving clients such as Apple and Nvidia, jumped more than 10% on Thursday morning after the company reported a 54% hike in net profit in the third quarter. The company expects annual revenue growth in the last three months of the year, as global chipmakers continue to benefit from demand boosted by AI applications.

Shares of chip companies rose on the results. Nvidia stock was up about 3%, Micron rose about 4% and AMD was up about 2% Thursday morning.

The company’s net income was 325.3 billion Taiwanese dollars ($10.1 billion) over the July-September quarter, surpassing an LSEG estimate of $300.2 billion Taiwanese dollars cited by Reuters.

Net revenue came in at $23.5 billion in the third quarter, up 36% year-on-year, with TSMC’s gross margin rising to 57.8% over July-September, compared with 54.3% in the same period of last year.

“Based on the current business outlook, we expect for our fourth-quarter revenue to be between $26.1 billion and $26.9 billion, which represents a 13% sequential increase or a 35% year-over-year increase at the midpoint,” TSMC Chief Financial Officer Wendell Huang said during an earnings call following the results release, according to a call transcript produced by FactSet.

In the third quarter, “our business was supported by strong smartphone and AI-related demand for our industry leading 3nm and 5nm technologies,” TSMC said in a statement, referencing its semiconductor nodes.

In the Thursday earnings call, TSMC Chairman and CEO C.C. Wei stressed that AI demand is “real” and that the company has experienced the “deepest and widest growth of anyone in this industry,” as a result.

“We have talked to our customers all the time, including our hyperscaler customers who are building their own chips. And almost every AI innovator is working with TSMC,” he said.

The company’s Taipei-listed shares have soared nearly 80% year-to-date, outpacing the 28.57% gains of the broader market over the same period.

TSMC now anticipates its capital expenditure for this year will pick up to slightly higher than $30 billion, it said during its earnings call. The firm’s capex costs edged higher to $6.4 billion in the third quarter, versus $6.36 billion across the three preceding months.

The Taiwanese chipmaker, whose advanced chips are vital to a swathe of products ranging from smartphones to AI applications, has been increasing its manufacturing presence worldwide, carrying out a vast overseas investment of $65 billion for three chip plants in Arizona to meet U.S. demand, as well as opening its first factory in Japan earlier this year.

TSMC’s earnings beat comes the same week as Netherlands-based ASML, which supplies machines to the Taiwanese company, issued a lower-than-expected forecast of net sales, sending shares tumbling.

Some market participants have questioned the long-term resilience of the AI boom and the return on increasing investments in the technology sector — while Young Liu, CEO and chairman of key Apple supplier Foxconn, told CNBC last week that the AI frenzy “still has some time to go,” as advanced language models evolve with each new iteration.

Correction: This article has been updated to accurately reflect that TSMC’s third-quarter net income hit 325.3 billion Taiwanese dollars.

Asian chip stocks rose on Tuesday after Nvidia closed at a record high overnight as the chip company continues to ride the massive artificial intelligence wave.

Stocks tied to Nvidia suppliers as well as other chip companies advanced as the bullish investor sentiment spilled over. Shares of South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix, which manufacturers high bandwidth memory chips for AI applications, for Nvidia surged 2.5%.

Samsung Electronics, which is expected to be manufacturing HBM chips for some Nvidia products, saw its shares rise 0.5%.

Shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Hon Hai Precision Industry — known internationally as Foxconn — which are part of the Nvidia supply chain, jumped about 2% and 2.5%, respectively.

Japanese semiconductor manufacturing firm Tokyo Electron surged 5%, testing equipment supplier Advantest gained 3.6% and Renesas Electronics rose over 4%.

Japanese technology conglomerate SoftBank Group, which owns a stake in chip designer Arm, jumped as much as 6.4%.

American enterprise software giant ServiceNow announced Monday it plans to invest $1.5 billion in the U.K. over the next five years, in a vote of confidence for Prime Minister Keir Starmer as he looks to attract foreign investment to the country.

The tech firm said the mammoth sum of cash will go toward growing its U.K. business, as it plans to expand with new office space and grow its employee base beyond the 1,000 people it hires in Britain currently.

Beyond local business expansion, ServiceNow also said it would invest the cash into localizing the processing of data for its large language models (LLMs), AI models that rely on vast quantities of training data to be able to understand and generate text like a human.

The firm said that it would bring Nvidia GPUs (graphics processing units) to its data centers based in London and the Welsh city of Newport to support processing of data on its LLMs within the U.K. This will help support “domain specific LLMs” for U.K. clients and governments, ServiceNow said.

Policymakers and regulators in Europe have increasingly been calling for so-called AI “sovereignty.” This refers to the idea that the technologies and data underpinning advanced AI systems should be stored within Europe, and more accurately reflect the culture and history of Europeans.

ServiceNow said it also planned to offer new skills programs in the U.K. that will reach 240,000 learners.

“The United Kingdom is embracing technology transformation at scale. In this new age of AI, the country continues to be a global leader in driving innovation for the benefit of all its communities,” Bill McDermott, ServiceNow’s CEO, said in a statement Monday.

“Our investment accelerates the U.K.’s push to put AI to work, empowering people, enriching experiences, and strengthening societal bonds. Together, ServiceNow and our customers across the U.K. are delivering a future where technology benefits everyone.”   

The announcement was made as part of the International Investment Summit, where U.K. leader Keir Starmer is set to gather 300 business leaders to encourage foreign investment.

ServiceNow, which has a market capitalization of $194.6 billion, has seen its shares climb over 37% this year, thanks in no small part to the hype surrounding AI.

ServiceNow’s cloud-based technology is intended to help other businesses manage digital workflows. But the company hasn’t been shy in touting its own AI prowess.

Last month, ServiceNow launched Xanadu, a platform that uses a range of AI technologies including so-called “agents” to boost worker productivity. AI agents are digital assistants that are designed to help employees get tasks done with limited supervision.

In the second quarter of 2024, the company reported earnings per share of $3.13, excluding items, on $2.63 billion in revenue, beating analyst expectations.

ServiceNow isn’t the only tech giant betting big on the U.K. as a global destination for AI innovation. Earlier this year, Salesforce opened its first global AI center in London, a space it’s using to facilitate AI training and upskilling programs as well as promote industry collaboration.

The AI center forms part of a $4 billion investment Salesforce committed to making in the U.K. over five years in June last year.

SINGAPORE — Chinese markets skyrocketed over 10% at the open Tuesday, after coming back from the Golden Week holiday as the rally from Beijing’s stimulus measures continued.

The CSI 300 index was up 10.2% in early deals, before paring some gains to record a rise of about 7.5%, but Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index plummeted over 6%.

Other Asia-Pacific markets mostly fell on Tuesday, with investors watching August pay and spending data out from Japan.

Household spending in Japan fell 1.9% year-on-year in August in real terms, a softer fall compared to the 2.6% decline expected by a Reuters poll of economists.

The drop is the fastest pace of decline since January, which saw a 6.3% fall year-on-year. That decline also came before spring wage negotiations delivered the largest pay hikes to unionized Japanese workers in 33 years.

However, real wages rose in August, with data from the country’s statistics bureau indicating that wages climbed 2% to an average of 574,334 yen ($3,877.44).

Overnight in the U.S., stocks slid as rising oil prices and higher Treasury yields weighed on market sentiment.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.94%, while the S&P 500 slid 0.96%. The Nasdaq Composite  saw the largest loss, falling 1.18%.

The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.02%, marking the first time since August that the yield topped 4%.

Oil prices also rose as tensions in the Middle East remain high. U.S. crude climbed more than 3% to settle above $77 per barrel.

— CNBC’s Lisa Kailai Han and Jesse Pound contributed to this report.