From Science Fair to A.I. Super Bowl: Nvidia’s Transformation
In 2009, when Nvidia held its first developer conference, the event resembled a science fair. Held in a San Jose, California, hotel, it showcased the work of dozens of academics, their computer research displayed on white poster boards. Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, moved through the space like a judge, evaluating the advancements.
This year, the Nvidia developer conference, known as GTC, presents a striking contrast.
On Tuesday, over 25,000 attendees were expected to flood the event. The crowd gathered in a National Hockey League arena to hear a speech from Huang, who has become known as “A.I. Jesus,” discussing the future of artificial intelligence. Nvidia, a leading developer of A.I. chips, has dominated San Jose with its signature neon green and black colors. Streets were closed, and hotel prices skyrocketed, reaching as high as $1,800 a night.
Industry leaders such as Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Technologies; Jeffrey Katzenberg, co-founder of DreamWorks and WndrCo; and Bill McDermott, CEO of ServiceNow, were among the attendees.
“GTC is jampacked,” Huang said at the conference’s opening on Tuesday morning. “The only way to hold more people at GTC is we’re going to have to grow San Jose.”
The evolution of Nvidia’s conference from an academic gathering to the Super Bowl of A.I. – a weeklong showcase for robots, large language models, and autonomous cars – is symbolic of the company’s transformation. As A.I. has gained mainstream prominence, demand has surged for Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs), the powerful chips crucial to developing the technology. This surge has propelled the chipmaker to a valuation of nearly $3 trillion, a significant increase from $8 billion in 2009.
However, Nvidia’s rapid rise has also sparked questions. Generative A.I., which enables question answering, image creation, and code writing, has been praised for its potential to revolutionize businesses and unlock trillions of dollars in economic value. Companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta are investing hundreds of billions of dollars to realize this vision.
