Jensen Huang, creator and CEO of NVIDIA, today challenged National Taiwan University graduates to run hard to take advantage of the unparalleled opportunities that AI will provide but to embrace the inevitable setbacks along the road.
He urged the 10,000 graduates of the top university on the island to follow whatever they chose to accomplish with vigor and commitment while maintaining the humility necessary to absorb the forthcoming difficult lessons.
“Run after it like we did, whatever it is. Run. Don’t move,” Huang said, donning a black graduation robe instead of his trademark black leather jacket, which featured the school’s plum-blossom logo on the collar in royal blue, white, and aqua.
“Keep in mind that either you are running to avoid becoming food or you are running to find food. And frequently, it’s impossible to know which. Run in either case.”
Huang, who grew up in Taiwan but later relocated to the United States, presented three tales of failure and retreat after the initial push. He recognized his parents among the audience. He referred to them as crucial in shaping NVIDIA’s identity throughout its three-decade transformation from a three-person gaming graphics startup to a leading worldwide AI company with a market value of close to a trillion dollars.
Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang said at a recent graduation ceremony in Taiwan, “I was successful until I started NVIDIA.” Huang said he experienced “great big” failures at Nvidia, which were “humiliating and embarrassing”. “Many nearly doomed us,” he added. Huang, who co-founded the chip manufacturing business in 1993, has seen his wealth increase by more than doubling this year to $35 billion.
The first was a significant early contract the business obtained to assist Sega in developing a game system. Rapid changes in the sector forced NVIDIA to cancel the agreement, narrowly avoiding bankruptcy with the support of Sega’s leadership.
He claimed, “Confronting our error and humbly seeking assistance saved NVIDIA.
The second was the choice to integrate CUDA into all of the company’s GPUs in 2007, giving them the ability to process data in addition to 3D visuals. Before the chips were utilized for machine learning, the costly, lengthy investment that received considerable criticism did not start to pay off for years.
The third was the choice to enter the lucrative mobile phone industry in 2010, just as graphics-rich capabilities were becoming more accessible. However, the sector quickly became commoditized, and NVIDIA quickly pulled back, taking some flak at first but paving the door for investment in potential new areas like robotics and autonomous vehicles.
“Our tactical retreat worked,” he declared. We gained the opportunity to create a new market by abandoning the phone industry.
Huang spoke to graduates about the connections between the brave new age of AI they are entering now and the world he joined after graduating 40 years ago, at the dawn of the PC revolution.
“For your journey, take along some of my learnings,” he said. Accept responsibility for your actions, seek assistance when needed, go through hardships to achieve your goals, and make personal sacrifices to live a life of meaning.
