While Nvidia's research teams were making major, albeit quiet, moves designing processors that would be uniquely powerful for the needs of AI and deep learning, there was a new company out there looking for just that. OpenAI was founded in 2015 with the goal of advancing AI in a way that benefits humanity, and they quickly realized that the computational demands for training large AI models were immense. OpenAI, from the outset, needed highly scalable computational power to achieve its ambitious goals, and Nvidia's GPUs were the natural choice—few alternatives could match Nvidia's hardware capabilities for AI training. OpenAI's AI models grew in complexity and turned increasingly to Nvidia’s GPUs for their unmatched performance in processing the massive datasets required for training.
The results of Nvidia's preparation emerged in a whirlwind almost a decade later when ChatGPT propelled into the public view and demand for Nvidia’s GPUs and other chips skyrocketed in turn. Within two months of release, ChatGPT gathered a hundred million users, the fastest adoption of any platform in history. In 2019, Nvidia’s market value was around $100 billion. From the launch of ChatGPT to March 12, 2024, Nvidia’s stock price increased by 428 percent. By mid-2023, Nvidia’s valuation had surpassed $1 trillion for the first time. As of this writing, its value has exceeded $3 trillion, making Nvidia one of just three companies to boast such a value.
ChatGPT—the spark to Nvidia’s preparation—set in motion a fire that’s still burning. To some observers, the explosion of products from Nvidia since 2022 is evidence that the company had developed innovations and brought them to market very, very fast. But what looked to observers like sudden momentum was in fact the result of intentional, and tedious, preparation. Nvida co-founders Jen-Hsun Huang and Chris Malachowsky, the archers who had pulled a full sheaf of arrows further and further back in their company’s bow, set in motion a display of momentum few other companies will ever experience. Nvidia’s momentum may have appeared sudden to those watching the market but in fact was built through years of intensive research and strategic patience, which catapulted them to the forefront of technological advancement.
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