Advizex ‘First-Mover’ AI Investment Pays Off In Nvidia ‘Trailblazer’ Award
‘We made a big first-mover bet on AI,’ says Advizex CEO C.R. Howdyshell. ‘This award reinforces that commitment and also acknowledges just how important AI is to our future and our strategy.’
This week that big bet paid off with Nvidia honoring Advizex at its blockbuster GTC 2025 conference in San Jose, Calif., as its Trailblazer Partner of the Year. The award singled out Advizex as a “visionary partner spearheading AI adoption and setting new industry standards.”
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For C.R. Howdyshell (pictured above left), CEO of Advizex, a Fulcrum IT Partners company, the award was a seal of approval that Advizex’s investments are resonating with both customers and Nvidia as the blue-chip standard bearer of the AI revolution.
“We are humbled and honored at Advizex to be recognized for our AI achievements and the success we have had with Nvidia as our partner,” said Howdyshell, who was singled out by Nvidia Channel Chief Craig Weinstein for his AI commitment at the GTC conference. “We made a big first-mover bet on AI. This award reinforces that commitment and also acknowledges just how important AI is to our future and our strategy. It reinforces our investment and belief that we are moving down the right path. But we are just beginning. The size and scope of the AI opportunity is unparalleled. We are just getting started. In fact, we are doubling down on the AI opportunity.”
The Advizex-Fulcrum double-barreled bet includes a team of data scientists and technical talent aimed at helping vertical market customers cut through the AI noise with proven return on investment. That meant establishing a new AI business unit one year ago led by Advizex sales veteran Steve Kucker (pictured above right) as vice president and general manager for high-performance compute and AI, and hiring new AI talent. It has also meant a seamless bond with Fulcrum AI pioneer Razor, which has pioneered AI vertical market use cases with 60 data scientists and developers leveraging Nvidia blueprints.
“Fulcrum’s investment in AI with Razor was huge,” said Howdyshell. “This isn’t just about GPUs. It is the software, networking and services that we bring together with the full Nvidia technology stack. Advizex is working across that whole Nvidia technology stack. That has accelerated our momentum. This goes well beyond Nvidia GPUs. We can do Nvidia blueprints and provide services and support for Nvidia software and networking.”
In its formal award recognition, Nvidia praised Advizex for its commitment to driving “innovation in AI and high-performance computing,” helping industries like healthcare, manufacturing, retail and government “seamlessly integrate advanced AI technologies” into existing business frameworks.
“This enables organizations to achieve significant operations efficiencies, enhanced decision-making, and accelerated digital transformation,” said Nvidia.
Weinstein, vice president of Nvidia’s Americas partner organization, credited Advizex with bringing a “services-led” commitment to the AI market.
“There is a serious executive-level commitment to accelerating their AI efforts in the enterprise, and they’re doing that not only with Nvidia, but they’re doing it across and with an ecosystem that they believe is important to that go-to-market,” said Weinstein. “They’re deeply leaning into everything I described around our enablement: AI advisors, our workshops, our boot camps, our hackathons. So they can build the technical acumen to engage with an enterprise customer in a more meaningful way.”
Weinstein singled out Advizex’s strength in bringing AI reference architectures to customers. “The one thing we’re trying to do for enterprises is make AI simpler, and part of that is providing reference architectures and blueprints so they (Advizex) can understand the ingredients of how to build and then, most importantly, looking for meaningful partners that can help them deploy,” he said. “The easiest analogy is like when you build a house: usually you start with a set of blueprints, and those blueprints provide you a roadmap. And the goal is to think through everything in advance so by the time you start to build, you make less mistakes, because mistakes are costly, and the same thing is applicable to AI. You not only have the physical side of that with the infrastructure; you actually have a very meaningful software deployment. Advizex recognizes both of those, and they’re working very hard to lean into us and our ecosystem to learn.”
Last but not least, Advizex’s vertical market expertise and customer reach is critical, said Weinstein. “They understand industries,” he said of Advizex. “They have identified a handful of industries that are important to them, and they’re important to them because they’re existing customers of theirs. They’ve been servicing those customers for decades, and so it’s ripe for opportunity for partners like Advizex to go back to their most important customers and help those customers in a trusted advisor status. And so that’s how they’ve been able to differentiate themselves and really get their AI practice off the ground.”
For Howdyshell, the AI investment is part and parcel of the company’s 50-year “customer for life” legacy aimed at ensuring Advizex clients can bring the benefits of breakthrough technology like AI to their customers. That said, the AI revolution is more profound and far reaching than any other technology shift in Advizex’s 50-year history, said Howdyshell.
“This is not like public cloud where some people adopted it and some stayed with their traditional computing assets on premise in a hybrid world,” said Howdyshell. “What is happening with AI is happening everywhere in the world. At some point everybody is going to have to embrace AI. That is why we made the first mover bet. This isn’t a question of whether customers are going to adopt AI. It is a question of when?”
Howdyshell said longtime mainstay partners Dell Technologies and Hewlett Packard Enterprise have also played a critical role in helping to ramp up Advizex’s AI capabilities.
Dell, for its part, has made a significant investment in the Advizex AI lab in Cleveland, Ohio. “That AI lab allows us to do real world AI use cases with our customers,” he said. “That allows us to really show what we can do for them with AI real world AI solutions.”
Advizex is also in the process of building out a digital human with large language model capabilities to provide better managed services support, including for Oracle databases. “We think that AI and automation can change the way we support our customers from a managed services perspective whether it is databases or physical infrastructure,” said Howdyshell. “AI is going to transform how we do business with customers. Through technology we’re going to be able to serve our customers more cost efficiently and effectively.”
Howdyshell credited Nvidia Channel Sales Leader Alyssa Portera, who focuses on regional solution providers and ecosystem partnerships in her role, for helping Advizex step up its AI solutions efforts.
“Alyssa jumped in to help us make the investments and execute at the pace needed to go wide and deep with Nvidia,” said Howdyshell. “She deserves a lot of credit for our success with Nvidia. Alyssa helped us focus on the full stack beyond GPUs with software, networking and services. It is the full stack that makes Nivida the most relevant to customers. There is no one close to Nvidia when it comes to AI. They know exactly how to go to market and help customers in the AI journey. We are taking that same message to our customers.”
Howdyshell said he sees the Nvidia AI opportunity driving all of its key market segments in 2025 including, as-a-service, networking and managed services. “For Advizex, Nvidia touches all our pillars,” he said. “We are seeing more customers interested in AI and GPU as a service. What Nvidia is doing with Infiniband is going to compliment what we are doing in networking.”
The breakthrough moment that catapulted Advizex’s AI efforts to another level came last year when it won a $40 million deal with bitcoin miner and next-generation energy infrastructure platform provider Hut8, said Howdyshell.
“That showed that Steve Kucker, our technical team and all the Advizex employees involved in that deal were willing to put in the time and make the investment necessary to ensure Hut8 was successful,” he said. “We worked with the customer, Nvidia and HPE to make that deal happen.”
The Hut8 deal served to accelerate Advizex’s investments in building out a vertical AI-based solution set focused on the solution provider’s five key verticals: manufacturing, healthcare, SLED (state local government and education), retail and finance. “We are consistently working with those industries on the right use cases to execute on a business plan strategy around AI,” he said. “Our vertical market use case by industry is complimenting what Nvidia is doing. The go to market we have with Nvidia aligns extremely well. That is why we are so excited about the future.”
Howdyshell said he sees the Nvidia Trailblazer award as a game changer of sorts that will lead to more customers looking to Advizex to help them transform their business with AI.
“This changes our ability to support them in their AI journeys,” he said. “It puts us at the forefront of the AI conversation and makes us relevant in AI with both existing and new customers.”
In fact, Howdyshell said, the company’s AI sales pipeline is currently at $120 million with multiple deals at $5 million to $10 million. If a number of large deals come through Advizex AI sales could hit $80 million to $100 million this year.
“The pipeline is growing,” he said. “We are seeing a lot of interest from higher education research institutions. We have a number of research proposals on the table.”
When asked about the potential for future sales growth with Nvidia and the overall AI solutions business, Howdyshell said the sky is the limit.
“Our sales growth with Nvidia is the fastest we have ever come out of the gate and executed with an OEM,” he said “Our overall AI business was $55 million last year. We think we can double that this year. The potential for AI growth for us in the future is unlimited.”
