#176 Nvidia’s Rise: A Story of Vision, Not Chance
Last week, I was reading The Nvidia Way, and coincidentally, the stock market saw one of its biggest drops ever in the industry—driven by Nvidia's 15% decline after DeepSeek went viral. Of course, no company is invincible. But being deep into Nvidia’s story and learning about Jensen Huang, I realized something fundamental: unlike many tech companies that rely on trends, Nvidia creates them. They didn’t just capitalize on the AI boom; they made it possible. And with the rise of edge computing, self-driving cars, and even the metaverse, their vision still has plenty of room to grow.
I’ve read quite a few books about great companies and their founders—Elon Musk’s autobiography, Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, and others. One common theme in these stories is luck. Right place, right time, right connections. Luck always played some role in their success. But Nvidia’s story just feels different to me. It wasn’t luck that made Nvidia what it is today—it was Jensen Huang’s vision and hard work. He didn’t just stumble into an opportunity. He saw the future before anyone else and built a company to meet it.
When the industry norm dictated a two-year cycle for chip manufacturing, Jensen pushed boundaries and reduced the cycle to just six months. This wasn’t a minor improvement—it was a complete paradigm shift that allowed Nvidia to outpace competitors and deliver cutting-edge technology at an unprecedented speed. Jensen also recognized early on that GPUs could be more than just gaming hardware. While most companies were focused on traditional computing, he saw an opportunity in academia and high-performance computing. Nvidia poured resources into developing CUDA, a programming model that allowed GPUs to be used for deep learning and scientific research in spite of facing the pressure from investors. This investment played a key role in enabling breakthroughs like Ilya Sutskever’s famous ImageNet paper, which unlocked the power of compute.
Reading the book I realized even the company’s name has an interesting story. The name “Nvidia” comes from the Latin word Invidia, which means “envy.” The idea was that Nvidia’s graphics would be so advanced, competitors would be envious. It’s a bold statement—one that the company has certainly lived up to over the years.
Today, Nvidia is at the center of the AI revolution. Companies like OpenAI, Google, and Meta rely on Nvidia’s chips to train their massive AI models. Their dominance in AI computing isn’t an accident—it’s a result of decades of preparation. While other companies scrambled to pivot into AI, Nvidia had already built the foundation. It wasn’t just about making powerful GPUs; they created the software ecosystem around it, ensuring that AI researchers and developers had the tools they needed. CUDA, TensorRT, and other Nvidia technologies have become the backbone of modern AI advancements today.
Sure, timing matters, but more than anything, I feel Jensen’s ability to see the future and position Nvidia accordingly made all the difference. Many companies get a lucky break but fail to capitalize on it. Others try to follow trends but arrive too late. Nvidia didn’t wait for luck. It built the future it wanted to see.
And that’s The Nvidia Way—vision and hard work over luck, every time.
Nvidia is Jensen. Jensen is Nvidia. Jensen is the company.
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