Invisible Machines podcast by UX Magazine Why Success Feels Like Failure at NVIDIA
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Aug 22, 2025 Bryan Catanzaro, Vice President of Applied Deep Learning Research at NVIDIA, shares insights on transforming NVIDIA from a hardware company into an AI leader. He discusses the unique psychology and power dynamics within the company that enable innovation. A memorable 2019 keynote plea for data categorization for language models highlights collaboration's role in GPU advancements. With humor, he reflects on how hair symbolizes identity and innovation, emphasizing agility and teamwork as key to navigating success in a fast-paced tech landscape.
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Hair As The First Technology
- Bryan Catanzaro credits hair as an early human technology that shaped social signaling and safety.
- He argues humans cut hair to enable long growth, linking grooming to cultural evolution.
Early GPU Push And ICML Skepticism
- Catanzaro recalls pushing GPUs for ML starting in 2006 after CUDA let him speed experiments 200x versus CPUs and FPGAs.
- He presented early GPU-ML work at ICML in 2008 despite skepticism from peers.
Success Feels Like Failure At NVIDIA
- NVIDIA's internal culture treats success as a signal to get more worried, not to celebrate.
- Catanzaro says the company feels everything is broken when externally it appears dominant.
