Nvidia Part III: The Dawn of the AI Era (2022-2023) (Audio)

It’s a(nother) new era for Nvidia. We thought we’d closed the Acquired book on Nvidia back in April 2022. The story was all wrapped up: Jensen & crew had set out on an amazing journey to accelerate the world’s computing workloads. Along the way they’d discovered a wondrous opportunity (machine learning powered social media feed recommendations). They forged incredible Power in the CUDA platform, and used it to triumph over seemingly insurmountable adversity — the stock market penalty-box. But, it turned out that was only the precursor to an even wilder journey. Over the past 18 months Nvidia has weathered one of the steepest stock crashes in history ($500B+ market cap wiped away peak-to-trough!). And, it has of course also experienced an even more fantastical rise — becoming the platform that’s powering the emergence of perhaps a new form of intelligence itself… and in the process becoming a trillion-dollar company. Today we tell another chapter in the amazing Nvidia saga: the dawn of the AI era. Tune in! Sponsors: Thanks to our fantastic partners, any member of the Acquired community can now get: Scalable, clean and low-cost cloud AI compute from Crusoe, and listen to our recent ACQ2 interview with CEO Chase Lochmiller https://bit.ly/acquiredcrusoe https://bit.ly/CrusoeACQ2 Your product growth powered by Statsig https://bit.ly/statsigacquired Free access to our episode research on Blinkist, plus our favorite books on Ben & David’s Bookshelf https://bit.ly/BlinkistNvidia https://bit.ly/BlinkistBookshelf More Acquired!: Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes https://www.acquired.fm/email Join the Slack http://acquired.fm/slack Subscribe to ACQ2 https://pod.link/acquiredlp Become an LP and support the show. Help us pick episodes, Zoom calls and more https://acquired.fm/lp ACQ hats are back in stock in the ACQ Merch Store! https://www.acquired.fm/store Links: Asianometry on AI Hardware https://youtu.be/5tmGKTNW8DQ?si=m4PJpgnrERddk99E Episode sources https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d5vDY0pFcLGeZEg9t0vNMVnMvFTwMwcv9QhQHca4Aus/edit?usp=sharing Carve Outs: Alias https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0285333/ Moana https://movies.disney.com/moana Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions. © Copyright ACQ, LLC

Ben GilberthostDavid Rosenthalhost

Sep 6, 20232h 54mWatch on YouTube ↗

EPISODE INFO

Released: September 6, 2023
Duration: 2h 54m
Channel: Acquired
Watch on YouTube: ▶ Open ↗

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

It’s a(nother) new era for Nvidia. We thought we’d closed the Acquired book on Nvidia back in April 2022. The story was all wrapped up: Jensen & crew had set out on an amazing journey to accelerate the world’s computing workloads. Along the way they’d discovered a wondrous opportunity (machine learning powered social media feed recommendations). They forged incredible Power in the CUDA platform, and used it to triumph over seemingly insurmountable adversity — the stock market penalty-box. But, it turned out that was only the precursor to an even wilder journey. Over the past 18 months Nvidia has weathered one of the steepest stock crashes in history ($500B+ market cap wiped away peak-to-trough!). And, it has of course also experienced an even more fantastical rise — becoming the platform that’s powering the emergence of perhaps a new form of intelligence itself… and in the process becoming a trillion-dollar company. Today we tell another chapter in the amazing Nvidia saga: the dawn of the AI era. Tune in! Sponsors: Thanks to our fantastic partners, any member of the Acquired community can now get: Scalable, clean and low-cost cloud AI compute from Crusoe, and listen to our recent ACQ2 interview with CEO Chase Lochmiller https://bit.ly/acquiredcrusoe https://bit.ly/CrusoeACQ2 Your product growth powered by Statsig https://bit.ly/statsigacquired Free access to our episode research on Blinkist, plus our favorite books on Ben & David’s Bookshelf https://bit.ly/BlinkistNvidia https://bit.ly/BlinkistBookshelf More Acquired!: Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes https://www.acquired.fm/email Join the Slack http://acquired.fm/slack Subscribe to ACQ2 https://pod.link/acquiredlp Become an LP and support the show. Help us pick episodes, Zoom calls and more https://acquired.fm/lp ACQ hats are back in stock in the ACQ Merch Store! https://www.acquired.fm/store Links: Asianometry on AI Hardware https://youtu.be/5tmGKTNW8DQ?si=m4PJpgnrERddk99E Episode sources https://docs.google.com/document/d/1d5vDY0pFcLGeZEg9t0vNMVnMvFTwMwcv9QhQHca4Aus/edit?usp=sharing Carve Outs: Alias https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0285333/ Moana https://movies.disney.com/moana Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions. © Copyright ACQ, LLC

SPEAKERS

Ben Gilbert
host
David Rosenthal
host

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Acquired, featuring Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, Nvidia Part III: The Dawn of the AI Era (2022-2023) (Audio) explores how Nvidia’s data-center platform powered the generative AI boom Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal revisit Nvidia because the 2022–2023 generative AI breakout (ChatGPT and LLMs) created a step-function shift in data-center demand for GPU compute.

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