Insights from Head of Coaching

Dear Students,
 

Where did the funny name “Nvidia” come from? Believe it or not, according to Wikipedia, the company, founded in 1993, originally had no name. The founders called all of their files “NV,” as in “next version.” Not until the entity incorporated did they decide to review all English words that started with these two letters (to no surprise, there weren’t many), to create an actual identity, ultimately combining them with Latin terms relating to “vision” and “envy” to create today’s moniker.
 

Regardless of its historical naming origins, there’s no doubt that Nvidia, a $61B American multinational company, is the ultimate global business success story. With roughly 95% of the specialist chip market (per the Economist) and 30K employees, Nvidia’s stock is trading at nearly $938/share, 30 years into its history. As is now well-known, Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s dynamic CEO known for his black leather jackets, co-founded the company with two other tech professionals at a Denny’s roadside diner (where he’d been working) in East San Jose, CA.
 

Like many successful entrepreneurs, though, Huang’s early years taught him the value of hard work. As a youngster (according to the Immigrant Learning Center), he was sent to “a school for difficult children,” where “his main chore was to clean toilets in the dorm.” Although business may be booming today for the 61-year-old Taiwanese-American, he knows that constant attention to not only GPUs and AI in general, but also the human side of the equation, will be required for continued corporate growth. Simply put, Huang is known for saying: “The most powerful technologies are the ones that empower others.” Please see the article below for more details.