You may have seen the recent news that Nvidia, the California-based computer chip company, has recently crossed the $3 trillion market capitalization mark on the stock market, putting it in competition with tech giants like Apple and Microsoft.
But although Nvidia's CEO has been dubbed the “Taylor Swift” of the tech industry by Mark Zuckerberg, the 31-year-old company has only recently made waves in the mainstream media, in part because of its new ties to Elon Musk and TikTok-owner ByteDance.
Here's everything you need to know about the company, its wildly popular CEO, and why it's the talk of the town right now.
🤖 What is Nvidia?
Nvidia was originally founded to make computer chips that processed graphics quickly — a technology useful for computer games — but the company has begun to pivot into artificial intelligence in the past few years, following a surge in public interest in AI following OpenAI's 2022 release of ChatGPT (trained using some of Nvidia's graphics).
As tech companies began to turn their attention to AI, Nvidia positioned itself as the new go-to supplier of software and other materials needed for the massive computing power AI requires. All the big tech companies, including Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft, use Nvidia's computer chips for AI.
Today, Nvidia is valued at nearly $3 trillion, roughly the same value as Apple.
🗣️ How do you pronounce “Nvidia”?
It's in video yeah.
👨💻 Who is CEO Jensen Huang?
Mr. Hwang co-founded Nvidia in April 1993. In the decades since, the 61-year-old electrical engineer has become a celebrity in the tech world. Mark Zuckerberg called her the “Taylor Swift of tech,” commenting on an Instagram photo in March of him posing in his trademark black leather jacket.
According to Forbes magazine, Huang is worth an estimated $106 billion.
According to the BBC, wherever Huang goes, “crowds chant his name and compete for selfies and autographs.” This was evident when a video of Huang signing women's bras went viral at Computex, an annual tech conference in his native Taiwan. Reuters even dubbed the event “Gensanity.”
😎 Why is Mr Huang such a celebrity?
The US and China have been competing for dominance of the computer chip market, especially chips designed for AI processing, and as Business Insider reports, Taiwan has come out on top thanks to Nvidia, a source of great pride for the Taiwanese people and a major source of revenue for the island.
Huang's humble upbringing may be one of the reasons he is more popular with the public than other wealthy tech CEOs.
To learn more about Huang's career, Check out this profile from Fortune.
🇨🇳 What's the relationship between Nvidia and ByteDance?
On June 6, The Information website published an investigation revealing that US-based computer technology company Oracle had lent Nvidia chips to China's ByteDance for training TikTok's AI. The US has banned US companies from selling AI computer chips to China since 2022.
The report revealed a critical loophole in the U.S. sanctions against China amid rising tensions between the two countries, especially over technology and data privacy. In April, the U.S. passed a bill that would have forced ByteDance to sell TikTok by January 2025 or be banned in the U.S., but ByteDance fought back by suing the government.
🚗 Where does Elon Musk fit into all of this?
On June 4, CNBC reported that Elon Musk had instructed NVIDIA to prioritize sending its AI chips to X and xAI, competitors of ChatGPT that Musk launched in 2023, over Tesla.
The decision contradicts Musk's previous statements and promotions up until April that Tesla and the production of its electric cars and humanoid robots were his priorities. The transfer of Nvidia's chips to X and xAI will delay Tesla's projects. The decision has reportedly unsettled Tesla shareholders and could affect their vote on Musk's multi-billion dollar compensation package, scheduled for June 13.
