Nvidia founder Jensen Huang would not do it again

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.)

Before starting Apple, Steve Jobs cold-called HP at 12 years old and got a summer job

As a leader, Jobs was both admired and resented for his unwavering commitment to his vision, which led him to push his colleagues beyond their limits. Jobs once told a rival computer executive that he'd make a product so good, they'd buy one for their kid.

Warren Buffett has said not investing in Google or Amazon early enough was a mistake on his part

After avoiding investing in tech stocks during the dot-com boom, Buffett's stance on investing in tech was widely criticized. Buffett later shared his thoughts on why he regrets not investing early enough.

'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)

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.

Elon Musk follows a five-step decision-making process when simplifying technology

He begins by determining whether how something has been previously done is—in his words—"dumb," or if a certain feature should even exist, let alone be optimized. This first principles method has helped him develop some of the most valuable companies in the world.

Watch a rare early interview with Palantir CEO Alex Karp

Prior to Palantir's public listing in 2020, CEO Alex Karp did not give many interviews. In a rare interview from 2009, Karp discussed the dominance of American technology, his academic background, and the founding idea of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs as key players in aiding the fight against terrorism.

Learn how eight 'traitors' played an essential role in founding Silicon Valley

In the 1950s, William Shockley led the way in the semiconductor business. Everything changed in 1957, after eight of his engineers—whom he called the "Traitorous Eight"—left his company to start their own. Their company, named Fairchild Semiconductor, employed many future founders of major Silicon Valley companies. Today, the Traitorous Eight are considered among the founders of Silicon Valley.

Watch LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman interview his deepfake doppelgänger

LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman created an AI doppelgänger of himself in 2024 that was fed a sample of his voice and trained on his books and other writings and speeches. In this conversation, his deepfake version attempts to replicate human mannerisms, including scratching their nose and getting distracted.

Hear history nerd Ray Dalio talk about making decisions during times of uncertainty

For Dalio, history is the best teacher. Dalio emphasizes relying on and respecting the past as a framework for the future, so that during unsettling times, people still make good decisions.

Implanted neurotechnology can leave users vulnerable when manufacturers go under

Despite providing relief from neurological conditions, patients are left stranded when the companies that make these devices shut down. The lack of regulation means patients often face technical failure, insurance battles, or risky surgeries to maintain their quality of life.

Scientists increasingly can't predict what AI will do

Most AI systems are so-called "black box" models, where we only see inputs and outputs while the inner workings remain obscure. This piece, written prior to the launch of ChatGPT, cautions developers to know why and how a system produces its results, and not to sacrifice explainability for accuracy.

Inside entrepreneur Bryan Johnson's race to live forever

Created by entrepreneur Bryan Johnson in 2022, the Rejuvenation Olympics asks participants to find ways, including exercise and dietary supplements, to slow their biological aging. But some of these tactics are extreme in cost or nature—such as Johnson's regular injections of blood from his teenage son.

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 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.

A quote by scientist Nikola Tesla

"The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result ... His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way."

J. Robert Oppenheimer’s grandson says his grandfather would back nuclear power

While the "father of the atomic bomb" referred to the bomb as "an evil thing," after the Manhattan Project, he also described nuclear energy’s potential as an environmentally friendly solution to address the world's energy problem.

Former Temu CEO Colin Huang is among China's richest people

With a $43.3B net worth as of September 2025, Huang was the founder of PDD Holdings, Temu’s parent company.

Would you opt for a life with no pain?

Philosopher Robert Nozick famously posed a question challenging the philosophy of hedonism—the idea that maximizing pleasure is the greatest good in life. His thought experiment imagined people could plug into a machine that would give total pleasure, suggesting the idea itself is not a compelling or desirable one. Learn the arguments and ideas in this short video.

Even at the height of his popularity, Spielberg felt like an outsider

By 1992, Spielberg was already one of the most successful names in Hollywood, but he had trouble kicking the alienation he’d felt as a kid. In this interview from 1992, on the cusp of the biggest year of his career, he talks about that feeling and how it motivated him.

Since its 2019 reveal, the Cybertruck underwent numerous delays and design changes

Elon Musk first envisioned the Cybertruck in 2012, with its design inspired by "Blade Runner" and "The Spy Who Loved Me." Semiconductor shortages and battery manufacturing issues made it impossible to manufacture enough vehicles to meet the 250,000 preorders without shifting delivery dates.

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.

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.'

Recent research found that the brain doesn't seem to massively rewire following amputation—upending earlier beliefs about the cause of phantom limb pain.

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

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

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

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

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

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

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.

In 2009, the nation was gripped by the story of a missing young boy who was believed to be floating over Colorado in a homemade balloon, until it was revealed that he was at home the whole time.

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.

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%.

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.

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

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.

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

How the most famous Ebola book, The Hot Zone, which sold 3.5 million copies and was translated into 30 languages, got aspects of the disease so wrong.

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

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

One of the most famous portraits ever taken is 'Afghan Girl' (1984) by Steve McCurry, yet the subject Sharbat Gula went much of her life without being identified or benefitting from the image's success.

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.

Urushiol, the oily toxin in poison ivy, can remain allergenic on clothing for years.