Business Wars How Nvidia Owned A.I. | Light Speed or Bust | 1
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Dec 17, 2025 Discover the origins of Nvidia, a startup born from three engineers' vision in a Denny's. Learn how CEO Jensen Huang made high-stakes decisions to save the company from early misjudgments and product failures. Explore the dramatic pivot to create first-person shooter chips and the breakthrough launch of the Riva 128 that changed the game. Delve into Nvidia's rise with parallel computing, the challenges posed by competitors like Intel, and the ambitious gamble that led to their dominance in GPUs.
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Sell The Shovels, Not The Gold
- Being the supplier to many rivals can be more profitable than being a single-service winner in an industry gold rush.
- NVIDIA's GPU supply role made it the 'shovel seller' in the AI boom, profiting regardless of which AI company wins.
Diner Meeting That Made NVIDIA
- Jensen Huang met NVIDIA cofounders in a Denny's and demanded the business justify a $50M revenue target before joining.
- That spreadsheet shifted the founders from a dream to a model that convinced Huang to sign on and found NVIDIA.
The NV1 Misfire
- NVIDIA's first chip, the NV1, used quadratic rendering and bundled audio but failed because games and Microsoft standardized on polygonal rendering.
- The mismatch with developers and falling memory prices sank NV1 demand and led to massive returns.