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Sorry, my points are rather disorganized since I just woke up this morning, but I think Nvidia CEO's claim of "betting the farm on AI" is questionable. The chr
by chongli 3y ago
Sorry, my points are rather disorganized since I just woke up this morning, but I think Nvidia CEO's claim of "betting the farm on AI" is questionable.
The chronology is this:
2007: CUDA released
2012: AlexNet (which runs on CUDA) turns heads and everyone (in the research world, not the public) starts getting really excited about AI
2012-2021: NVidia invests in CUDA while getting carried by gaming and crypto
2022-2023: AI explodes into the public consciousness and NVidia valuation balloons to absurd levels
Now, I don't think anyone can argue that NVidia was not smart to build CUDA. What no one would have predicted was how important it would turn out to be back when they started. It was more like "hey, these gaming devices are pretty good at matrix/vector math, let's build an API for people who want to do that" and then it turning out that AI is all matrix/vector math.
The point is that all of NVidia's investment in CUDA and AI was subsidized by the gaming and crypto cash cows. They didn't have to "bet the farm", they just had to keep it going as a side project and increase their investment as they saw the momentum build.