Opinion
Huang: AI innovation must be accelerated, not slowed, to improve safety
“There were even attitudes that, that we had to slow down AI innovation, which I believe is exactly the opposite. We had to speed up AI innovation because through innovation, we can make the technology safer, more secure.”
Assertion Partly supported
AI revolutionized radiology scans, but human radiologist demand has still increased
“AI has now completely revolutionized radiology. Every single radiologist uses AI to Study the scans. It does it incredibly fast, incredibly accurately, better than a human can. However, radiologists' demand has gone up.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Huang: AI will empower new college graduates rather than taking their jobs
“AI is going to help this next generation of new college grads achieve greater things, build greater things, not take their jobs.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Huang: Humanity will achieve centuries of technological progress in coming decades
“We will do in the next several decades what it took humanity several hundred years to achieve.”
Opinion
Huang is less concerned than most about a hot conflict over Taiwan
“If you ask me, am I concerned about a hot conflict? I'm less concerned than most. But depending on the actions of the leaders, We may cause the hot conflict, and so I am of the opinion that we all must be more long-term minded if we can. We ought to have a mor…”
What-if
Huang would 'absolutely not' start NVIDIA again if he knew the pain
“The question is, suppose I knew everything then that I now know how hard it is, and all of the pain and suffering and all the embarrassment and humiliation and all the setbacks, and you compress all of that. And you just told that thirty-year-old kid, listen t…”
Assertion Supported
Distributing CUDA for free on GPUs severely depressed NVIDIA's gross margins
“The answer was, let's use GeForce, which is the GPU that is now everywhere in the world used for playing video games. And let's have GeForce carry on its back CUDA to every single computer in the world. Now, of course, by doing so, our gross margins would go f…”
Disclosure
Huang: NVIDIA refuses to enter markets merely to take market share
“We don't want to dedicate our lives to go work on something that the worlds already have. I don't want our company working on things to capture share from somebody. They built a market. We want to take their share, and so let's go and fight to the bitter end, …”
Assertion Supported
Huang: NVIDIA was the first company bringing 3D graphics to consumers
“We were the first three-D graphics company in the world that started with the idea that we bring three-D graphics to consumers.”
Assertion Supported
Customers returned all 250,000 units of NVIDIA's first chip, the NV1
“Yeah, we sold 250,000. I've now, you know, I believe we could sell 250,000 of almost anything. But the algorithm didn't really work, and so we received 250,000 back. I mean, it all came back.”
Assertion Supported
Huang: NVIDIA's initial graphics architecture was incompatible with Microsoft's DirectX API
“And Microsoft is about to announce Windows 95. And Windows 95 has a API called DirectX, and DirectX does it the right way, and we were incompatible with DirectX. And so anyways, we chose some approaches that were just fundamentally wrong.”
Assertion Supported
Huang: Sega converted remaining $5M contract into NVIDIA equity investment
“And they turn the rest of the five million dollars of investment or contract into our investment in our company.”
Disclosure
Huang: NVIDIA spent half its remaining cash on a surplus hardware emulator
“And I took half of our company's money, so we were already running on fumes, and so I cut that life short even further, took that money, bought this machine that nobody else wanted to buy, brought it to the company, I said, here we are.”
Insight
Huang: Disruption happens when technology becomes good enough and incumbents over-serve
“The single most important thing about technology is the moment it becomes good enough, when you over-serve the market, you're ready for disruption.”
Disclosure
Jensen Huang describes himself as a 'battlefield CEO' energized by crisis
“The way I'm built is you put me in crisis. Alright, the perfect day is we are in trouble. And you just create the worst possible condition and Jensen, you need, we need you to come and help us think through this. That's my perfect. That's my vibe. Battlefield.…”
Assertion Supported
Huang: NVIDIA now designs chips with up to a trillion transistors
“At the time, the chip I was working on had a few thousand transistors. And now we design chips that are two hundred billion, a trillion transistors.”
Assertion Supported
Huang: Sega contracted NVIDIA for $12 million in 1994–1995
“And they contracted us for twelve million dollars in 1995, 1994.”
Assertion Partly supported
Huang: NVIDIA laid off two-thirds of its workforce after Sega pivot
“So anyways, I laid off two thirds of the company.”
Assertion Supported
Huang: Mass General doctors used NVIDIA chips for CT reconstruction before CUDA
“And two doctors at Mass General were using our graphics chips to do CT reconstruction.”
Jensen Huang