Nvidia Corporation Today / Santa Clara, California
FROM A BOOTH AT DENNY’S RESTAURANT TO THE WORLD’S MOST VALUABLE CHIP MAKER
_________________________
The origin story of the Nvidia, the world’s most valuable chip maker, started in 1993 when three engineers started meeting at a Denny’s in Silicon Valley and brainstorming ideas about computing over Grand Slam breakfasts.
As one of the there founders of Nvidia – Chris Malachowsky – told Ben Cohen in an article from the 6/1/23 WSJ, “We were not good customers. We were going to show up for four hours and drink 10 cups of coffee.”
Cohen notes that they “were such bad customers that they were kicked out of their booth and moved to a room in the back of the restaurant. There were two groups of people using this area of Denny’s as a co-working space: the founders of Nvidia and the police of San Jose, Calif. “All the cops are writing their reports,” Malachowsky told Cohen. “We’re sitting there with our laptops, trying to figure out whatever we’re doing.”
The Denny’s in San Jose where NVIDIA was founded in April 1993
The three founders of Nvidia were Jensen Huang (CEO as of 2024), a Taiwanese-American electrical engineer who was previously the director of CoreWare at LSI Logic as well as a microprocessor designer at AMD; Chris Malachowsky, an engineer who worked at Sun Microsystems and Chris Priem who was previously a senior staff engineer and graphics chip designer at IBM and Sun Microsystems.
The co-founders envisioned the ideal trajectory for the forthcoming wave of computing would be in the realm of accelerated computing, specifically in graphics-based processing. This path was chosen due to its unique ability to tackle challenges that eluded general-purpose computing methods. They also observed that video games were simultaneously one of the most computationally challenging problems and would have incredibly high sales volume; the two conditions do not happen very often. Video games became the company’s flywheel to reach large markets and fund huge R&D to solve massive computational problems. With $40,000 in the bank, the company was born. Subsequently, the company received $20 million of venture capital funding from Sequoia Capital and others.
Denny’s CEO Kelli Valade and Jensen Huang at the Denny’s Booth Where Nvidia was Founded
As Ben Cohen writes in his June 2023 WSJ article, “Before it was the birthplace of his company, Denny’s was important to Huang, who has been running Nvidia since Mark Zuckerberg was in elementary school. He wasn’t always a slick public speaker in his signature black leather jacket. In fact, Huang says he wouldn’t be the leader he is today if not for one job: waiting tables at a Denny’s.”
It was a formative experience writes Coen. “Huang was a shy teenager, but taking pancake orders taught him how to communicate with strangers and compromise in tense situations beyond his control. He also learned from one of his regulars that he should add mayo and mustard to a turkey sandwich called the Super Bird, which still remains his favorite item on the menu.”
For those interested in the history of Nvidia, Cohen’s WSJ article is a good place to start. For a quick overview of Nvidia, the Wikipedia article on it is good. The giant of traditional chip manufacturing is Intel which is ramping up its American production with a major new plant in Ohio. Is Intel perhaps putting too many “chips” into one basket? See an interesting article on this in a 2023 issue of the WSJ by Asa Fitch.
In many ways, the incredible story of Nvidia’s origin at Denny’s came full-circle on September 26, 2023 when Denny’s CEO Kelli Valade joined Huang in East San Jose to celebrate the founding of Nvidia at Denny’s on Berryessa Road. A plaque was installed to mark the relevant corner booth as the birthplace of a $1 trillion company.
_________________________________
Jensen Huang at The Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
(Listen to Jensen’s surprising advice to Stanford students starting at 36 minutes into the video.)
See our post about the politics of AI in Midnight Oil.
See the 4/28/24 60 Minutes segment on Jensen Huang