When Jensen Huang's Nvidia software company invented the graphics processing unit, it fundamentally changed the world.
Huang will receive the Gold House A1 Award in Business and Technology.
The GPU was a step ahead of the CPU (computer processing unit), and being a step ahead is how Huang, Nvidia's president and CEO, has been.
Nvidia began life as a gaming company in 1993, but in the past three decades, the company has been behind countless innovative technological advances. It dominates the GPU market, accounting for 88% of global sales, and is the market leader in providing artificial intelligence solutions. With its focus on the GPU market, Nvidia has focused on a wide range of AI applications, including self-driving cars, facial recognition and natural language processing. In doing so, the company has expanded its market reach – it dominates 70% of the market share for AI chip sales.
The key to Nvidia's success is being ahead of the game, and they did that with AI, early on. Speaking at the New York Times Book-Deal Summit last year, Huang said: “We observed and understood this about a decade and a half ago. I think a lot of people are still trying to sort it out. The reason people say we're practically the only company that does this is because we're probably the only company that's got it. And people are still trying to get it.”
Today, Huang ranks as the 20th richest person in the world on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and he has a net worth of $73 billion, up $29 billion since the start of the year.
And how does Huang achieve great success? What is his secret? “I work from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed. I work seven days a week. When I'm not working, I think about working and when I'm working, I'm working. I sit through movies, but I don't remember them because I'm thinking about work,” Huang told Stripe co-founder and CEO Patrick Collison.
