Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang once saved Nvidia from bankruptcy with a multi-million dollar Hail Mary

Nvidia founder Jensen Huang would not do it again

Huang was asked in 2023 whether he would do it all over again if he was transported back 30 years before. Huang said no, arguing he would not have knowingly put himself through the suffering and difficulties it took to build Nvidia, calling this ignorance to future pain one of his superpowers.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s keynotes have become a main event at CES

Watch Jensen Huang’s 2025 CES keynote, where he unveiled major advances in AI and GPU technology. His presentations now draw global attention, blending product reveals with sweeping visions of the future of computing.

Nvidia was founded in a Denny's restaurant

Nvidia is one of a handful of companies valued at more than $1T. In its early days, the semiconductor company sold GPUs, or graphics processing units, that were used for video games. But in recent years, Nvidia’s chips have been used for crypto and AI. Nvidia has faced several setbacks on its journey, including when the US sanctioned chip exports to China.

Jensen Huang doesn't think Nvidia was a great company on day one

"Nvidia wasn't a great company on day one. We made it great over 31 years," explained businessman Jensen Huang on a recent podcast episode. He covered other principals and lessons he learned while building Nvidia in the epsiode too.

By 2024, Nvidia had become one of the world’s most valuable companies

Nvidia started as a graphics chip designer for PCs and consoles. This explainer traces its rise from early GPU innovation to powering AI breakthroughs and fueling the data centers behind today’s biggest tech platforms.

Nvidia entered its AI era after learning that its chips could be used in industries beyond gaming

Its semiconductor chips were used in the automotive industry, for data centers, and by crypto miners. And starting in 2006, Nvidia took steps that would ultimately transform it into the AI company it’s known as today. This podcast is the second part of a three-part series diving deep into Nvidia’s company evolution.

Nvidia's attempted Arm acquisition revealed its hopes of becoming the world's leading AI company

Though Nvidia's acquisition of Arm, another company that designs semiconductors, was ultimately quashed over antitrust concerns, the attempt offered insights into Nvidia's business strategy. Over time, Nvidia has increasingly focused on using its graphics cards to power machine learning, and its platform CUDA is dominant in the sector.

Hear what Michael Burry thinks about the possibility of an AI bubble

Since his success shorting subprime mortgage-backed securities in 2008, Burry's positions have often become influential, sparking conversations on platforms like X. In 2025, Burry drew attention for betting against Nvidia and Palantir for being overvalued companies.

Rival companies AMD and Nvidia's CEOs are related

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Nvidia are two of the world's largest manufacturers of processing chips and are fierce competitors. AMD's CEO Lisa Su and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang are actually first cousins once removed, but reportedly don't share a close relationship and didn't even meet until later in life at an industry event.

The major AI industry players are creating a web of circular investments

Bloomberg created a network diagram that shows how companies like Nvidia and OpenAI are fueling the AI money machine. The chart shows that many top AI companies provide significant investments to one another.

Nvidia's rapid development of GPUs is forcing computing to depart from something called Moore's law

Moore’s law, named after Intel’s cofounder, predicts that the number of transistors on a chip will double every two years. But Nvidia could be outpacing that prediction.

Steve Jobs saved a nearly bankrupt Apple

Apple nearly went bankrupt in 1997, when the tech company had only three months of operational cash left. Apple's board ousted cofounder Steve Jobs in 1985, but he was brought back as interim CEO to revive the company when Apple purchased Jobs' company, NeXT.

DeepSeek is a Chinese AI startup that rattled US competitors when it made an AI model much faster and cheaper than they did

DeepSeek unveiled an AI model in 2025 that it said was made in two months for roughly $6M. For context, OpenAI has suggested it took over $100M to make its AI model GPT-4. The news rattled the stocks of American tech companies, including leading chipmaker Nvidia.

Elon Musk once tried to make himself CEO of OpenAI

After three years of funding the company since its 2015 launch, Musk believed OpenAI had fallen too far behind Google and proposed taking the helm. Rejected by OpenAI's other founders, Musk walked away and reneged on a $1B donation. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

The life of Anthropic's CEO, and how losing his father inspired his vision for AI

In 2006, Riccardo Amodei passed away from a rare illness, four years before a breakthrough treatment made it 95% curable. Seeking to accelerate scientific progress to prevent similar losses, Dario Amodei shifted his graduate studies at Princeton from theoretical physics to biology and has since pursued technological solutions to address complex biological problems.

A vending machine run with Anthropic's AI went out of business after it was convinced to give away items for free and sell a video game console.

A vending machine run with Anthropic's AI went out of business after it was convinced to give away items for free and sell a video game console.

Tour Brother Zhang's repair shop to see how graphics processing units are fixed

The workshop repairs 40 to 50 GPUs from across China daily, extending the life of the costly computer parts that are the lifeblood of the hardware powering AI tools. By salvaging working components of different GPUs, custom parts can be built atop printed circuit boards, including custom GPUs that manufacturers do not currently produce.

The 2024 Synapse collapse took $90M of people’s life savings with it

In 2024, a banking middleman called Synapse declared bankruptcy. Unfortunately, it also locked roughly 100,000 Americans out of their own money, which prompted a class action lawsuit.

Visa Founder Dee Hock abruptly left the company in 1984.

Hock was arguably an unlikely candidate for the founder of one of the most successful banking organizations of all time. He grew up extremely poor in rural Utah without indoor plumbing, but would go on to create one of the most innovative financial technologies of the 20th century.

'Super Mario Bros.' helped save the video game industry

A 1983 crash left the industry in tatters, desperate for a hit. Nintendo’s focus on a more immersive home experience was realized in “Super Mario Bros.,” bringing the industry from the arcade to the living room. The title eventually sold over 40 million units.

When he first enrolled at Princeton University, Jeff Bezos wanted to study physics

He later changed his major to electrical engineering and computer science. He graduated Summa Cum Laude and received job offers at Intel, Nokia, and Accenture, but he declined those offers in favor of a job at a fintech startup.

The company's success is often credited to cofounder Reed Hastings

Hastings advocates management philosophies like radical candor, agility, and a hands-off approach to high-performing employees. He stepped down as CEO in 2023 but remains Netflix’s chairman.

A successful angel investor can multiply their investment by 3 to 10 times

Angel investor Naval Ravikant explains what it takes to be successful in his field, from building an authentic brand to developing the judgment to choose which startups to back.

BYD overcame Tesla via state backing, cheaper cars, and vertical integration

The one-time battery company eclipsed Tesla in total sales in 2024. The Chinese-backed manufacturer targets low- to mid-tier cars and builds 75% of its components in-house. Its cars typically retail at half the cost of similar Tesla models.

Crypto history's is full of bizarre stories

Digital currencies based solely on misspellings of former President Joe Biden’s name have skyrocketed, and backers of a token based on a Shiba Inu wearing a hat raised $690K to get their logo on the Las Vegas Sphere.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

The Nasdaq's 'Magnificent 7' companies are responsible for roughly 40% of the Nasdaq 100 index's gains, while the remaining 93 companies account for the other 60%.

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

Venture capital is a form of funding provided to early-stage companies with high growth potential, typically in exchange for an equity (or ownership) stake

In 2019, a laptop loaded with six of the worst malware in history and described as 'an exhibit of historical weaponry' sold for $1.3M.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

US consumers collectively owe more than $1T to credit card companies—almost as much as they owe in auto loans.

In 1945, Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and legendary animator Walt Disney began collaborating on a short film that was not completed until 2003, years after both men had died.

The animatronic shark from Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws,' the first modern blockbuster, was a complex underwater apparatus called 'Bruce.'

Sony set the standard for cylinder-shaped batteries when it repurposed manufacturing equipment used to make rolls of magnetic recording tape.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

Massive 3D printers have been used to build homes by stacking layers of 'concrete toothpaste,' a fire-resistant material that effectively insulates against outside noise.

After 25 people used virtual reality headsets to practice flying with virtual wings—flapping their arms—their visual cortex responded to the wings almost as if they were real arms, treating them as body parts.

Human-to-human transmission of hantavirus remains extremely rare, so the 2026 hantavirus cruise ship outbreak doesn't mean we're facing a COVID-style pandemic risk.

Play the role of a student in a game where you try to navigate college and remain debt-free, selecting different income levels, high school experience, race, ethnicity, and more.

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

For centuries, Niagara Falls has been a magnet for daredevils seeking to conquer one of nature's most powerful wonders, with its 200-foot drop and water rushing at 32 feet per second with 280 tons of force.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

Brandi Chastain, the star of the 1999 US victory over China in the 1999 Women's World Cup, was a last-second choice to take the penalty kick that sealed the victory.