Why Nvidia Invests Billions in Companies That May Fail - Jensen Huang
Jensen Huang explains Nvidia's investment philosophy of backing multiple companies rather than picking winners, drawing from their own unlikely survival story. Despite having a technically flawed graphics architecture early on, Nvidia was the sole survivor among 60 competing 3D graphics companies.
Summary
Jensen Huang shares Nvidia's counterintuitive approach to investing in AI and foundation model companies, rooted in the company's own improbable success story. He reveals that when Nvidia started, there were 60 competing 3D graphics companies, and Nvidia would have been considered the least likely to succeed. Their early graphics architecture was 'precisely wrong' and nearly impossible for developers to support, yet they became the only survivor among all 60 companies. This experience taught Huang humility about predicting success and shaped Nvidia's current investment strategy. Rather than attempting to identify winners among the many promising foundation model companies, Nvidia invests broadly across multiple companies. Huang describes this approach as both a business imperative and a source of joy, emphasizing that they either support all companies or none, rather than trying to selectively back potential winners.
Key Insights
- Huang reveals that Nvidia was the sole survivor among 60 competing 3D graphics companies that existed when they started
- Huang admits that Nvidia would have been at the top of the list of companies NOT expected to make it among those 60 graphics companies
- Huang explains that Nvidia's early graphics architecture was 'precisely wrong' and impossible for developers to support
- Huang states that Nvidia's investment philosophy is to avoid picking winners and instead invest in all promising foundation model companies
- Huang describes investing in multiple companies as both a business imperative and a source of joy for Nvidia
Topics
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