Customers returned all 250,000 units of NVIDIA's first chip, the NV1
Jensen Huang · NVIDIA: Jensen Huang. From near collapse to becoming the world’s biggest company · May 18, 2026 · at 16:00
NVIDIA co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang discusses the commercial and technical failure of NVIDIA's first product, the NV1 multimedia chip.
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“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.”
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