No other company embodies Wall Street’s current obsession with AI more than Nvidia. It has become the world’s biggest maker of the specialised chips needed to power a new generation of AI products,surpassing Advanced Micro Devices and Intel in capability just asthe viral success of ChatGPT has virtually every company around the world baking AI into its operations.
In a speech at the National Taiwan University over the weekend,founder Jensen Huang shared the philosophy that has brought his company to this moment:“Run,don’t walk,” he said. “Either you are running for food,or you are running from becoming food.”
Huang’s personal fortune has more than doubled on the back of the stock surge. After trade on Tuesday,he had a net worth of $US36 billion,according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index,adding more than $US22 billion since the start of the year.
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Huang’s fortune is almost entirely derived from Nvidia shares. Known for his black leather jackets and a tattoo that resembles the Nvidia logo,he co-founded the company in 1993 and introduced the first graphics processing unit in 1999.
Huang’s urgency — and his willingness to take risks that other rule-by-committee businesses dare not — is what compelled Nvidia,the Silicon Valley chipmaker he founded 30 years ago,to make big bets on artificial intelligence years before anyone else was taking it seriously. Today,it’s proving to be the company’s golden goose.
Nvidia’s shares have soared since last week when it gave an AI-fuelled sales forecast that shattered Wall Street’s estimates. The stock continued to gain after announcing several new artificial intelligence-related products over the weekend that touch on everything from robotics to gaming to advertising and networking. Huang also unveiled an AI supercomputer platform that will help tech companies create their own versions of ChatGPT.