Nvidia’s Jensen Huang: prophet of the AI age
Jensen Huang’s Nvidia started out in computer games. That may have been merely a toehold on the route to global dominance in the tech industry.
![Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/ULUXwpZ6ZunEVDhZTd3V8Q-415-80.jpg)
In 1993, Jensen Huang quit a well-paid position as a Silicon Valley chip designer to launch a videogames venture with two friends. They called it Nvidia – a play on the Latin word for “envy”. At the time, “many people thought he was mad”, says The Times, and he struggled to raise seed capital. But nearly 30 years on, Huang is presiding over the largest and most valuable semiconductor company in the world and hailed as one of tech’s great visionaries. “Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk – I put Jensen in that group,” says one admirer.
Sprinkled with 21st-century gold dust
With hindsight, Nvidia’s early focus on games seems “an unconventional path” to global dominance, says the Financial Times. But Huang’s great breakthrough was the realisation that the data-intensive chips needed to create imaginary gaming worlds could be put to more scientific uses. The sector then was “a zero billion-dollar market”, he tells Forbes. But “we postulated” that this new industry, with its “rich and beautiful” 3D graphics, was going to be one of the largest in tech. After floating in 1999, Nvidia evolved from making PC graphics cards to graphics processors (GPUs) before taking the major leap into programming GPUs for more general-purpose tasks in 2007. Its chips have since become “the main engines for training the neural networks at the heart of artificial intelligence [AI]” – in other words, 21st-century gold dust. Nvidia’s shares have leaped tenfold since 2016.
Huang, 58, cuts a somewhat flamboyant figure, habitually adding a leather jacket to the all-black Silicon Valley uniform, and sporting a prominent tattoo based on Nvidia’s logo at the top of one arm, says Fortune. He had it done to mark the stock hitting $100 and claims to have cried “like a baby” from the pain.
Subscribe to MoneyWeek
Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE
![https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748.jpg](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/mw70aro6gl1676370748-320-80.jpg)
Sign up to Money Morning
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
Born in 1963 in Taiwan, Huang moved to the US a decade later and grew up in Oregon. His education – at a Baptist boarding school in rural Kentucky – was somewhat unusual, and duties included cleaning the bathrooms daily for a dorm of 150 boys. But he describes it as a formative experience, adding that he “loved every minute”. A trained electrical engineer – he studied first at Oregon State and then Stanford – Huang has always combined his talents with technology with a “ruthless focus on execution”, Adobe chief executive Shantanu Narayen told Fortune. He’s not the sort of visionary who talks “about going to Mars or something”, observes an early Nvidia backer. “His vision is out five to ten years.” He’s widely admired for positioning his company to take advantage of blossoming trends: for understanding “where the puck is going”.
Of late, Huang’s puck has been whirling around the Cambridge HQ of Arm, the UK chip champion he hopes to buy from Japan’s SoftBank for about $40bn – assuming the UK government, which is examining the deal on national-security grounds, allows the deal to go head. Huang reckons that acquiring the chipmaker at the heart of most smart devices globally will be a transformative move – hastening his vision to unleash “the modern Big Bang”.
Unsurprisingly, the rest of the industry has misgivings about such a stranglehold of power. Moreover, the US-China trade war, and the current acute shortage of chips, have rammed home, even to the most technically illiterate, the strategic importance of semiconductors. Huang may go down in history as one of the great prophets of the AI age. Unfortunately for him, perhaps, the rest of the world has cottoned on.
Sign up to Money Morning
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.
She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.
Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.
She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.
-
What is an offset mortgage and should you consider one?
Mortgages Offset mortgages are a good way to put your money to work. We explain what they are and if they might work for you.
By Ruth Jackson-Kirby Published
-
Tesla and Alphabet announce results – should you invest in Big Tech?
How profitable are the world’s biggest tech companies? We share the latest so far this earnings season.
By Katie Williams Published
-
Revolut founder Nik Storonsky cashes in – what's next for the fintech billionaire?
Nik Storonsky has shaken up the banking industry with Revolut. He is now preparing a new project that could do the same to the venture capital sector
By Jane Lewis Published
-
Is local production making a comeback?
Companies return production closer to home and shorten their supply chains due to the pandemic and geopolitical turmoil. How should investors react?
By Dr Matthew Partridge Published
-
French election: an unexpected win for the left-wing
The snap French election delivered a stalemate. What does this mean for the country's stability?
By Dr Matthew Partridge Published
-
Rachel Reeves: Britain’s new iron chancellor
Rachel Reeves enters No. 11 Downing Street with a determination to keep a tight grip on the purse strings. She has the makings of a chancellor of consequence.
By Jane Lewis Published
-
Amazon turns 30 – what will the next decade bring?
Amazon started life as an online bookseller operating out of a garage in Seattle. What does its future hold?
By Simon Wilson Published
-
Margot Robbie launches new gin brand
Margot Robbie is an actress, producer, investor and now a liquor baron with her new gin brand
By Jane Lewis Published
-
Return of Larry Ellison: the god of Silicon Valley
Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, was a pioneer of the US tech scene in the 1970s. The AI boom has given him a new lease of life.
By Jane Lewis Published
-
Charlie Mullins: Britain’s richest plumber launches a new venture
Plumbing tycoon and businessman Charlie Mullins aims to become the "Harrods of the handyman world".
By Stuart Watkins Published