The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The Company Behind the A.I. Boom

20 snips
Dec 29, 2025
Stephen Witt, a technology journalist and author of *The Thinking Machine*, dives into NVIDIA's groundbreaking role in the AI boom. He explains how the company, led by CEO Jensen Huang, revolutionized computing with their GPUs, essential for neural networks. Witt also discusses the delicate geopolitical tensions with China and NVIDIA's ongoing competition. Additionally, he shares Huang's visionary ideas for robots and the Omniverse, while weighing the utopian benefits of AI against potential societal risks.
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INSIGHT

Hardware-Software Synergy Fueled AI

  • NVIDIA's GPUs fused parallel-hardware design with neural-net software to enable modern AI breakthroughs.
  • Stephen Witt argues this hardware-software synergy accelerated AI by roughly a decade.
ANECDOTE

Breakthrough Built On Two Gaming Cards

  • A breakthrough 2012 system was trained on two retail gaming cards, showing consumer GPUs could run powerful neural nets.
  • That bedroom-built experiment drew researchers into the NVIDIA ecosystem and seeded modern AI development.
INSIGHT

Engineering-Led Corporate Strategy

  • Jensen Huang's engineering mindset drives NVIDIA to build capabilities before demand exists.
  • Witt credits Huang's technical leadership, not just business skill, for NVIDIA's long-term bets.
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