Thirty years ago, Taiwan immigrant Jensen Huang founded Nvidia with the dream of revolutionizing PCs and gaming with 3D graphics.
In 1999, after laying off the majority of workers and nearly going bankrupt, the company succeeded when it launched what it claims as the world’s first Graphics Processing Unit (GPU).
Then Jensen bet the company on something entirely different: AI. Now, that bet is paying off in a big way as Nvidia’s A100 chips quickly become the coveted training engines for ChatGPT and other generative AI.
But as the chip shortage eases, other chip giants like Intel are struggling. And with all it’s chips made by TSMC in Taiwan, Nvidia remains vulnerable to mounting U.S.-China trade tensions.
We went to Nvidia’s Silicon Valley, California, headquarters to talk with Huang and get a behind-the scenes-look at the chips powering gaming and the AI boom.