Jensen Huang on building NVIDIA
Huang tells NVIDIA's story as a company that had to create its technology and its market together, starting with video games and a mission that looked impossible in 1993. Near-death bets taught it to drop wrong strategies fast and act on reasoned beliefs, including putting CUDA on every GeForce at great cost. He sees the CUDA install base, kept compatible and trusted by developers, as the company's central advantage.
16 points · 7 appearances · 2023–2026
How the view evolved
Build a network others succeed in, not a moat → NVIDIA's moat is the CUDA install base and trust
In 2023 he resisted calling NVIDIA's position a moat, preferring a network where partners share the success; by 2026 he calls the CUDA install base, and developers' trust in it, the company's single most important advantage.
Up next
2023–2026 · changed view
“So in the early 90s, when we first started the company, we observed that in a software program inside it, there are just a few lines of code. Maybe 10% of the code does 99% of the processing. And that 99% of the processing could be done in parallel. However, the other 90% of the code has to be done sequentially. It turns out that the proper computer, the perfect computer, is one that could do sequential processing and parallel processing, not just one or the other. That was the big observation. And we set out to build a company to solve computer problems that normal computers can't. And that's really the beginning of Nvidia.”
2023–2026 · changed view
“And so the question is the what I'm leading up to is ultimately what is the purpose? What is the purpose of the lawyer? And has the purpose changed? What is the purpose? You know, one of the examples that I gave is that I would give is for example if my car became self-driving will all chauffeers be out of jobs? The answer probably is not because for some per for some chauffeers they for some people who are driving you they could be protectors some people they're part of the experience part of the service so when you get there they you know they could take care of things for you and so for a lot of different reasons not all chauffeers would lose their jobs some chauffeers would lose their jobs and many chauffeers would change their jobs and the type of applications of autonomous vehicles will probably increase you know the usage of the technology within find new homes and so I think you have to go back to what is the purpose of a job you know like for example if AI comes along I actually don't believe I'm going to lose my job because my purpose isn't to I have to look at a lot of documents I study a lot of emails I look at a bunch of diagrams you know the question is what is the job and the purpose of somebody probably hasn't changed a lawyer for example help people that probably hasn't changed studying legal documents generating documents it's part of the job not the job.”
2023–2026 · changed view
“I think I know what consciousness is the sense of experience the ability to know self versus the ability to be able to reflect know our own self the sense of ego I think all of all of those human experiences probably is what consciousness is but why it exists versus the concept of knowledge and intelligence which is what AI is defined by today it has knowledge it has intelligence artificial intelligence we don't call it artificial consciousness artificial intelligence the ability to perceive believe, recognize, understand, plan, perform tasks. Those things are foundations of intelligence to know things, knowledge. I don't, it's clearly different than consciousness.”
2023–2026
“That moment in time for our company gave us so much confidence. And the reason for that is you can succeed in doing something, inventing a future, even if you were not informed about it at all. And it's kind of my attitude about everything now. When somebody tells me about something and I've never heard of it before, or if I've heard of it, don't understand how it works at all, my first thought is always, how hard can it be? And it's probably just a textbook away. You're probably one arXiv paper away from figuring this out. And so I spent a lot of time reading arXiv papers, and it's true.”