Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos each served as tech guru’s, but no one can claim that title these days. Mr. Musk has lost all of his mystique and has become a polarizing figure. Zuckerberg sold us the social media dream, which turned into a nightmare. Mr. Bezos took it upon himself to escape from his Amazon CEO chair to fly rockets and frolic on a yacht with his fiancée. (Good for him.)
Vacancies at the top of the technology industry are looming like a missing tooth. Several months after ChatGPT was released, he was announced in November 2022, and it seemed likely that his CEO at OpenAI, Sam Altman, would take the job, but he is still in need. It doesn’t have a lifespan. (Mr. Zuckerberg was in a similar position in 2010, before he bought Instagram and WhatsApp.) But the AI boom has seen a rise in the produced a number of candidates. Rather than building chatbots and self-driving cars themselves, Huang’s company develops the wonderfully complex chips that make them possible.
Fans have a fascinating and thorough American origin story. An immigrant from Taiwan, he co-founded his Nvidia in a Denny’s booth in 1993, buying his 20 percent stake in the company with the $200 he had in his pocket. He served as the company’s first chief executive officer, and although he never relinquished or was forced out of the position, after some early stumbles the company became his has grown into a formidable manufacturer of chips. In the early 2000s, Huang continued to bet on graphics processing units (GPUs). GPUs have proven to be very important for deep learning applications and artificial intelligence, which is why the demand for GPUs has skyrocketed for no reason. Mr. Huang now seems to be a visionary, but his business has a big moat because it is difficult for him to build a major microchip company.
Although not many Americans buy Nvidia products directly, they have nonetheless been paying close attention to the company’s stock price and, as a result, its CEO, over the past few years. Before NVIDIA’s earnings announcement on February 21st, there were questions about whether the company would be able to maintain its strong quarter-on-quarter growth. A day after Huang announced that his Nvidia once again beat analyst expectations, the company posted the largest single-session value increase in market history. Mr. Huang’s personal wealth alone has increased him by nearly $10 billion, and he has risen 11 places in the world rankings. forbes Real-time rich list since January 1st – and the rally wasn’t over yet. On Monday, Nvidia’s market capitalization surpassed Saudi Arabia’s Aramco, fulfilling the oft-heard claim that chips are the new oil. As of this writing, the only companies in the world that are more valuable than chipmakers are Microsoft and Apple.
Mr. Huang is not yet famous. There is no Oscar-winning David Fincher film about him. He can still eat out at restaurants in the suburbs as well as coastal cities without anyone noticing. He has silver hair from the neck up and wears glasses, and looks about his age. From the neck down, he developed a unique and youthful fashion sense. This is an important prerequisite for anyone who wants to become a technology king. Steve Jobs wore a sleek black turtleneck. Zuckerberg is wearing a practical hoodie and his T-shirt. Bezos reinvented himself with the jack frame and down vest. On stage, Fan, an attractive but ultimately workmanlike performer, usually wears a black leather jacket. Sometimes it has a floppy collar. It can also be a collarless moto. (either way, Men’s wear rep approves.) At some point, Huang also started not owning a watch. why? “Because,” as he has told interviewers and viewers many times, “now is the most important time.”
I don’t know what that quote means, but perhaps Several The timing device was always within his reach. But when I saw it posted on X (formerly his Twitter) as if it were the ultimate pearl of wisdom, I felt the strength of the rising fan base. In the world of technology, stan culture is often expressed in exactly this way. The CEO’s idiosyncratic ideas about life and business are elevated to the status of Mao’s Little Red Book. Remember Zuckerberg’s pledge to “move fast and break things” or Bezos’ legendary penchant for writing memos? Technology influencers and middle managers have recently started citing yellowism on LinkedIn—Did you know that Does that mean he has 40 direct reports, doesn’t have regular one-on-ones, and thinks five-year plans are stupid? — suggests a similar cult of personality is forming.
Fans run a grand market, have followers, and even receive IV drips. The only thing that might prevent it from achieving the generational public stardom of Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg is the nature of NVIDIA’s products. The company’s chips power all kinds of technology that consumers are familiar with, but they’re inserted several steps back in the supply chain, making them nearly imperceptible to the average person. Mr. Hwang probably won’t be giving a keynote speech announcing some shiny new gadget or car that will fundamentally change people’s lives any time soon. His chips will never be as ubiquitous as Amazon on doorsteps and everywhere else its logo appears in American life. He will not be able to preside over the sublime spectacle of a rocket’s launch and re-landing. His role in an increasingly automated world will always be a bit abstract. Some explanation is required. To some, he may always seem like a magician’s assistant, even though he is becoming very wealthy.
More than anything, the cultural rise of fans likely reflects a deeply felt uncertainty about this AI moment. In the American imagination, our nation’s outstanding engineers are powerful symbols not only of our current prosperity but also of where we are going. Many of us are now convinced that AI will bring major changes to our lives. But we still don’t know which one. We are not ready to pick a winner. All we know for sure is that it will require significant computing power. So chipmakers may be king, at least for a while.