On Wednesday night, computer chip and software maker Nvidia reported revenue of $30 billion last quarter, double what it earned in the same period a year ago and beating Wall Street expectations.
With a market capitalization of $3 trillion, Nvidia is currently considered one of the most valuable companies in the United States after Apple.
Nvidia is a giant version of the American Dream.
Founder Jensen Huang was the son of Taiwanese immigrants who came to America.
He graduated from high school in Oregon at age 16 and earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University.
This week, the internet erupted in amazement at Huang’s LinkedIn profile, which reads:
Dishwasher, busboy, waiter | Denny’s | 1978-1983 Founder and CEO | Nvidia | 1993-present
There are only two entries.
Show more Charles Gasparino
“This is the most motivational thing I’ve ever seen,” one commentator said about X.
In fact, it was at a Denny’s in East San Jose that Huang, then a microprocessor designer, met a group of disillusioned Silicon Valley engineers and decided to start “the next version,” Nvidia.
Their original inspiration was to build better chips for video games, which they correctly recognized was a lucrative market.
Today, much of what’s driving Nvidia’s growth is the company’s pioneering work in artificial intelligence.
According to Reuters, Nvidia holds roughly 80% and 95% of the global market for AI chip design and software.
To achieve this, Nvidia employees are working hard.
As Bloomberg reported this week, some engineers at the Santa Clara, California-based company are working until 2 a.m. seven days a week.
But the pay is so good that few people quit: if you work at Nvidia for more than five years, you’re almost guaranteed to be a millionaire.
“If you want to accomplish something extraordinary, it’s not going to be easy,” Huang told 60 Minutes.
That’s absolutely true. If only politicians thought the same way.
American capitalism has a long history of big risks and big rewards, but Democrats, who want to stifle innovation, don’t care.
Their approach would see companies like Nvidia being regulated and taxed out of existence.
The United States has led the computer revolution, the software revolution, the Internet revolution, and so far, the AI revolution.
But the Progressive takeover of government bureaucracy threatens all of this.
For now, at least, the frenzy for companies on the cutting edge of this technology may or may not continue, because that’s how our great economy works.
The best thing the government can do is get out of the way.
When it comes to the AI promise behind Nvidia’s rise, I don’t agree with the doomsayers who worry the company’s success will be a disaster for the economy.
With AI technology, why do we need truck drivers when self-driving AI cars can deliver goods to your door cheaply and efficiently?
Will AI replace all humans and leave us with no jobs?
These are all valid concerns that I have witnessed firsthand. I grew up in Westchester.
My friends worked at the GM plant in Tarrytown because it was a good blue-collar job that didn’t require a college degree.
I remembered how people’s lives were destroyed when the factory closed in the early 1990s.
But it also forced people to innovate their lives and go where the money was.
Factory line workers became machinists or went back to school to learn skills to take advantage of the information economy.
I remember covering the dot-com bubble in the 1990s.
Pessimists predicted that the dot-com boom would destroy large parts of the economy.
When the bubble burst, the exact opposite happened.
Many dot-coms (remember Pets.com?) have failed and gone bankrupt.
Amazon survived, and from the ashes of the bubble Google and Facebook rose, a new economy was born, millions of jobs were created, and many millionaires and billionaires started businesses that paid taxes and employed working class people.
The end never came. Our economy became more innovative, and new and better jobs were created.
History shows that AI will follow the same path.
So, take some pride.
