The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 80 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Cloud instances cost $30 hourly for A100s and $100 hourly for H100s
“You can get access to a DGX server. That's eight A 100 for about 30 bucks an hour, or you can go over to AWS and get a P five dot 48 X large instance, which is eight H 100, which I believe is an HGX server for about a hundred dollars an hour.”
Nvidia generates $46 million in market capitalization for every single employee
“They have forty six million dollars of market cap per employee.”
Nvidia accelerated to a six-month product release cycle following the COVID-19 pandemic
“Since COVID, NVIDIA has re-accelerated to a six month shipping cycle. They've been doing two GTCs a year, most years since COVID, which is insane for the level of technology complexity that they're doing.”
Nvidia released the Megatron transformer model shortly after acquiring Mellanox in 2019
“In March of 2019, NVIDIA announced they were acquiring Mellanox for seven billion dollars in cash... In August of 2019, NVIDIA released what was at the time the largest transformer-based language model called Megatron. Eight point Three billion parameters trai…”
Nvidia sells DGX artificial intelligence server systems for $150,000 to $300,000
“NVIDIA sells these DGX systems for like, a 150 to 300,000 dollars a box.”
Nvidia split consumer and data center GPU architectures in September 2022
“Up until NVIDIA's current GPU generation, the hopper generation of GPUs for the data center, there was only one GPU architecture at NVIDIA, and that same architecture and those same chips from the same wafers made at TSMC, some of them went to consumer gaming …”
Rosenthal: 70 to 80 early PC graphics card companies received VC funding
“It was 70 or 80 separate companies making graphics cards all got funded”
Gilbert: NVIDIA spends only $1 billion annually on CapEx
“Nvidia only has a billion dollars of capex per year.”
Gilbert: NVIDIA trades at 3x Apple's P/S and 2x Microsoft's
“Nvidia has literally three times the price to sales ratio of Apple, or price to revenue as Apple, and nearly two x Microsoft.”
Rosenthal: Nvidia stock was under $5 per share across 2012-2015
“So literally NVIDIA stock in 20, like recent, like this is now known, 2012, 1314, 15. It doesn't trade above like five bucks a share. And NVIDIA today, as we record this, is I think about two 20 a share. The high in the past year has been well over 300.”
Gilbert: NVIDIA data center revenue tripled to over $10.5B annually
“So then insanely over the last two years, it three X the data center, the segment three X it is now doing over 10 and a half billion a year in revenue. And it's basically the same size as the gaming segment.”
Rosenthal: NVIDIA has never charged a dollar for CUDA
“NVIDIA to this day, now this may be changing, we'll talk about this at the end of the episode, has never charged a dollar for CUDA”
Rosenthal: NVIDIA market cap dropped 80% from $20B high in 2008
“So, you know, we said the high was around a twenty billion dollar market cap.
It drops 80%.
Eight zero.”
Rosenthal: NVIDIA Tegra powered the original Tesla Model S infotainment
“It powered the original Tesla Model S touchscreen. So, like, before any of the autopilot autonomous driving stuff, they were the processor powering just the infotainment, the touchscreen infotainment in the Model S.”
Rosenthal: NVIDIA Tegra powers the Nintendo Switch
“The Tegra platform still to this day is the main processor of the Nintendo Switch.”
NVIDIA Took Until 2016 to Reclaim 2007's $20B Market Cap
“It's not until 2016 that Nvidia gets back to the twenty billion dollar market cap peak that they were in 2007 when they were just a gaming company.”
Gilbert: NVIDIA Grew Revenue 60% in Previous Fiscal Year
“They're growing at 60% a year. This is a thirty-year-old company that grew 60% in revenue last year.”
Rosenthal: 2018 Crypto Mining Bust Caused NVIDIA Revenue to Decline
“And then when the crypto winter hit in 2018 and the end of the ICO craze and all that, the mining rig demand It fell off and this had become so big for Nvidia that their revenue actually declined.”
Rosenthal: NVIDIA Hopper will be TSMC's first 4nm chip
“I think Hopper is going to be the world's first four nanometer process chip using TSMC's new four nanometer.”
Nvidia's gross margin expanded from 29% in 2004 to 66% in 2022
“They sell their GPUs at a 66% gross margin. Hardware business with a 66% gross margin. Back in 2004, that gross margin was only 29% that they were able to command as a premium on their cards.”
Gilbert: Nvidia was the fastest semiconductor company to reach $1B revenue
“Which makes them the fastest semiconductor ever to reach a billion in revenue and gets them added to the S&P 500.”
Rosenthal: Nvidia sold 1 million Riva 128 units within four months
“They sell one million units of the Riva one 28 within four months.”
Nvidia IPO'd at a $600M Valuation in 1999
“They go public in beginning in 1999 at a six hundred million dollar market cap. So a hundred X return from the six million dollar post money valuation on the Sequoia and Sutter Hill round”
Rosenthal: Nvidia spent $1M on emulation hardware during its cash crunch
“They had to spend a million dollars just to get the emulator, you know, hardware and software to do this.”
Rosenthal: Nvidia doubled hardware performance every six months starting in 1997
“NVIDIA is now on a cycle starting in 1997, 1998. Where they are doubling the performance that they are delivering at a given price point to the market every six months.”
Rosenthal: Nvidia and TSMC signed a multi-year foundry partnership that remains today
“The next year, the two companies sign a huge multi-year deal for TSMC to become the primary foundry for NVIDIA and still are today.”
Rosenthal: Nvidia raised about $20M in total venture capital before going public
“They did raise some more money in between that initial two million and going public. I think they raised twenty million in total, but like there wasn't a lot of window and I think it was Sequoia and Sutter Hill that put that capital in for the rest of that twe…”
Gilbert: Nvidia commands 83% market share in standalone desktop/laptop GPUs
“When Nvidia began in 1993, it made computer graphics chips in a brutally competitive and low-margin market. There were 90 undifferentiated competitors all doing basically the same thing at the same time, and yet today, they have an 83% market share of standalo…”
Rosenthal: Nvidia secured early contract powering Sega arcade and console graphics
“They land a big deal with Sega to power their arcade consoles and their next generation home console to be the three D graphics engine and would ultimately become the Sega Saturn.”
Rosenthal: NVIDIA reached nearly a $20 billion market cap by mid-2007
“They go from sub a billion dollar market cap company after the tech crash up to five to six billion dollars kind of by 2004, 2005. Stock keeps going on a tear. By mid 2007, the stock reaches just under twenty billion dollar market cap.”