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Hungry upstarts don’t always get the attention of major players, but in You.com’s case, founder Richard Socher got a front-row seat alongside Nvidia’s Jensen Huang.
“I’m very impressed with Jensen,” Socher told Yahoo Finance managing editor Brian Soci on Yahoo Finance’s inaugural auction podcast (watch the video above; listen below).
His AI-powered search engine recently announced a $50 million Series B round with investors including Nvidia ( NVDA ) , Salesforce ( CRM ) Ventures , and DuckDuckGo . Capital raised the value of rivals Google ( GOOG ) and Yahoo to $1 billion.
Socher said he met with Huang for nearly two hours during the investment and discussed topics ranging from history to running a business.
“I don’t normally get nervous with most people, but it was really interesting to hear him give advice,” Socher said.
During his conversation, Socher said Huang shared that he was “very focused on Nvidia’s speed” in its early years.
In the end, Nvidia chose to pivot a bit to focus.
“At some point, they realized that the best way was to focus on gaming first and dominate that niche,” Socher said, suggesting that Google focus on You.com’s mission to power artificial intelligence as an alternative.
This isn’t the first time that Socher and Nvidia have crossed paths.
In the early 2010s, his research group at Stanford used Nvidia GPUs. At the time, Nvidia mostly sold GPU products to the graphics industry. “NVIDIA said, ‘Who are you? Why are you trying to buy our GPUs?'” said Socher, adding that GPUs now help the company’s AI workloads.
Started in 1993 – to create 3D graphics for gaming and multimedia purposes – Huang was born from a tennis scribble on a napkin. Back then, a growing number of consumers took up computing, leading to a demand for more powerful computers.
Six years later, Nvidia introduced graphics processing units (GPU), and in 2012, it brought AI to the forefront with the introduction of the AlexNet neural network.
This summer, Nvidia launched an initiative that uses its latest GPU technology to bring AI creation to a wider audience. The company’s AI chips have seen a wide performance lead over rivals AMD ( AMD ) and Intel ( INTC ), which has led to impressive financial results over the past two years.
Nvidia’s second-quarter sales and revenue rose 122% and 152%, respectively, from a year earlier.
After a summer retreat following mixed third-quarter guidance, Nvidia is now the world’s third most valuable company. According to the Yahoo Finance comparison tool, it has a market capitalization of $2.98 trillion, while Microsoft has $3.18 trillion and Apple $3.46 trillion.
Year to date, shares are up 145%, compared with an 18% gain for the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite.
Three times each week, the managing editor of Yahoo Finance Brian Sozzi Fields are insight-filled conversations and chats with big names in business and markets Opening the auction. You can find more episodes from us Video Center Or look over yourself Preferred streaming service.
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2024-09-30 18:05:41