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

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

Nvidia is now known as one of the top companies contributing to the AI boom, but back in the 1990s, it almost failed. One last-ditch effort conversation that CEO Jensen Huang had with an investor saved the company.

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 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.

A video compares two visions for the metaverse: one from Nvidia and one from Facebook

The CEOs of top technology companies Nvidia and Meta recently revealed their visions for the metaverse of the future. As of 2021, both Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg were bullish on virtual world-building, although Huang seemed more focused on the metaverse's business implications than its social ones, which Zuckerberg prioritized.

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.

Eric Schmidt, Google's former CEO, didn't believe in its ad model at first

He admits the company made many mistakes during its growth from 100 Google employees to nearly 200,000 in 2022. His biggest mistake as CEO involved social media, which was not executed well with the Google+ platform.

A conversation about open-source software with Linus Torvalds, who invented Linux

Originally written as part of a personal project, Torvalds acknowledges that Linux's growth came from opening it up to a community of users who could each work on different components, including those that were not his strength, such as the user interface. He also admits to being an engineer, rather than a visionary, relating more to Thomas Edison than Nikola Tesla.

Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard are known for creating the 'founding' Silicon Valley company Hewlett-Packard

During the company's early years, Hewlett and Packard established a management approach called "the HP Way." The approach, which was considered radical at the time, helped shape the way Silicon Valley is run today.

CEO Gary Tan explains Y Combinators guiding philosophy

Hear YC President and CEO Garry Tan talk about why he values earnesty and excellent communication skills in YC founders, his thoughts on AI, and more in this unexpectedly deep and in-depth interview.

Age of Miracles: Why Tencent is the ultimate outsider

Tencent has relatively low name recognition outside of China, despite being the world's biggest video game publisher, operating a 1.4-billion-user messaging network, and much more. This podcast explores the business principles underpinning its success, from long-term vision to a unique investment portfolio.

Tesla's lack of business savvy and inability to commercialize led to his obscurity

For decades, despite pioneering technologies for large-scale electrical systems and telecommunications, Nikola Tesla had been forgotten to history. Rather than monetizing his work and becoming more well known, his inventor-first mentality saw him sell off lucrative patents to fund new experiments in the short term.

Amazon didn't have a profitable quarter until 2001, more than 6 years into its existence

Jeff Bezos, however, took pride in Amazon's early unprofitability, reinvesting the money Amazon made back into its business, prioritizing investment into long-term growth and customer acquisition over short-term gains.

Listen to a former Palantir employee's take on the company

Among other former Palantir employees who have spoken out against the company's role in aiding surveillance and in the American government, former content strategist Juan Sebastían Pinto is concerned that Palantir is creating a monopoly over artificial intelligence.

In the beginning, there was Adam (Neumann)

This podcast episode, which includes a telling interview with one of WeWork’s first employees, tells the origin story of WeWork—from Neumann’s drinking and disheveled clothing, to WeWork’s first “summer camp” company party weekends in New York.

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.

Tony Hawk’s rise from outsider to skateboarding legend

In this podcast, Tony Hawk discusses his path from being an outsider in a niche sport to becoming skateboarding’s most recognizable figure—reflecting on competition dominance, business ventures, and lessons learned throughout his career.

One of Warren Buffett’s investing principles is investing in well-managed companies

The "Founders" podcast reviews biographies of the world’s top entrepreneurs, and this episode explores a 2012 book about Warren Buffett. The episode includes Buffett's advice on becoming a better business manager and investor.

'In my experience, each failure contains the seeds of your next success—if you are willing to learn from it.'

- Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen (1953–2018)

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

Cofounder Gavin Wood said Ethereum is going nowhere

Ethereum’s other cofounder, and the person known for coining the term “Web3,” Gavin Wood, ended his direct involvement with Ethereum in 2016. After that, he founded Polkadot with the aim of resolving the issues he saw with Ethereum. In this podcast, Wood says he thinks Ethereum is a financial success but that its progress has stalled. He also talks about hopes he had for the platform that have yet to be realized.

Bitcoin started as a .PDF

Have you ever wondered how bitcoin became, well, bitcoin? In this podcast episode, journalist PJ Vogt dives into what drove the bitcoin hype machine, explaining how it became the phenomenon it is today.

Sam Altman gave his first-ever startup pitch after dropping out of Stanford

He dropped out of Stanford to start Loopt, which sold in 2012 for $43.4M. You can watch his first-ever startup pitch in a video.

The story of Boeing's unraveling

Long lauded as one of the world's greatest aviation companies, Boeing has taken a nosedive in the last decade after major mass casualty crashes of its planes and high-profile scandals, which have led to numerous investigations, the temporary grounding of some of its planes, and a huge hit in its value. Listen to this first episode of a series telling the story of Boeing's fall.

The story of Klarna, founded in 2005 before BNPL was a category

Klarna was founded in 2005 in Sweden under the name Kreditor long before BNPL apps became commonplace. The podcast hosts interviewed founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski in 2024, where he shared the story of how he built the company.

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.

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.

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

Watch this video that uses Lego bricks to explain how venture capital works.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

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

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

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.

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

Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the SC Johnson headquarters in Wisconsin, aiming to make a cathedral-like workplace

See a ranking of the best (and worst) Federal Reserve Chairs since 1914 out of the 16 men and women who have held the office since.

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

Domino's Pizza's 30-minute delivery guarantee was responsible for the chain's 1980s surge, but it was discontinued after the company was found liable for delivery driver accidents.

Hear 50 years of iconic hip-hop samples, the genre's foundational looped tracks

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

US housing costs have risen by roughly 175% between 1991 and 2026—but a growing number of Gen Zers are becoming homeowners anyway. In 2025, 4% of homebuyers were Gen Z, up from 3% the year before.

How fusion—which releases energy when two lighter atoms combine to form a heavier atom—differs from fission

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

Indefinite cloning of some endangered species may not sustain their longevity because cloning success rates decrease as genetic mutations accumulate.

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.

Double world record holder Hunter Ewen helped conquer his fear of balloons, called globophobia, by training to win Guinness World Record titles for balloon inflation.

The identity of the Tank Man in the iconic photo from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests remains unknown and was possibly killed.