How integral is Huang to the success of Nvidia? As much as he seems to have done a good job, he appears less integral than with some companies like Bezos/Amazon or Zuckerberg/Meta (whether these are/were or not is besides the point, they are seen as such).

I'd expect a board to fire a CEO over this, so he will have to be critical to the business, more than a normal CEO is critical, to survive. The market reaction to him going would also be interesting. Seems like the markets are starting to figure out what the value is here.

As an Nvidian, I strongly disagree. I'm sure somehow the company would be fine in the long run without him, but until today I believed that his vastly superior judgement to his peers is to credit for Nvidia's success. Not to minca words, I think he is a far more qualified and intelligent CEO than pretty much anyone in big tech. There's a reason Nvidia doesn't have to lay people off ever.

"I'd expect a board to fire a CEO over this, "

God god, no.

There's very little he could ever accidentally tell someone that would matter that much.

Other than handing over very detailed schemas etc, there's almost nothing important he could tell them.

Maybe some future ideas and plans, maybe some government things about the Administration, it's small peanuts.

Nvidia is an operational success, their IP is embedded within deep layers of know how and expertise.

He's the 'father' of that org, he set the tone, they like him there.

Nvidia would risk being an Intel without him.

> How integral is Huang to the success of Nvidia?

He's the visionary behind what they do and the person who influences industries around him to make it real.

Navigating this political/diplomatic climate is key to Nvidia's success, and he appears to be driving that? In normal times maybe it would be different.

I think his fear of failing is the reason for their success.

I hope he at least gets a nice severance package in that scenario. Tough job market in tech right now.

I have seen and read this a lot over the years and I am starting to wonder may be it isn't Pat Gelsinger that called Nvidia lucky but people actually felt it that way naturally.

For over a decade CUDA was nothing but a money and silicon wasting function that brought in very little extra revenue for the amount of company resources it uses. And arguably it started even before CUDA with Cg. And I will say another unpopular thing, they are in hardware business, apart from the past 1 - 2 years which they are enjoying massive success, for most of the past 30 years hardware business are 10x tougher than Software side.

Most CEO would have given up. Paul Graham invented the term to describe it, Founder Mode.

And for another note about comments elsewhere in the thread that Open AI is what brought up the current AI craze. Nvidia was already selling to OpenAI via introduction of Elon Musk in 2016.

I seriously doubt Nvidia would have been anywhere close to what they are today without Jensen's Leadership.

What's this puritanical streak? Men in power have been having affairs from time immemorial. It's not great but it's also not original. The guy works for a corporation, not a church. Yawn.

We’re going to find out tomorrow and I suspect in this case the answer starts with a B.

I'm skeptical that he gets fired for this. The "Spy I loved" James bond style twist combined with his iconic leather jacket might actually come off as badass.

My understanding is that he has something like 50 direct reports. Which would make him a pretty major single point of failure.

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How integral is Nvidia to the success of LLMs? Seems like a few companies could step in and put that TSMC capacity to good use...

Not to sound too negative but IMO NVidia has largely been "right place, right time" and I don't think Huang has had much to do with it. NVidia made computer graphics cards and CUDA long ago; they just happened to be in the right place, twice, in quick succession: first crypto/blockchain, then AI, neither of which they really had any part in boosting. It's like they set up a general store that sells pickaxes and drills, then someone found gold in the mountain right next to them, and then the goldmine ran out but someone found oil right under them.

The one big thing I will given Huang credit for is not going all-in on blockchain and recognizing it as a bubble. NVidia never really pivoted from their core business/customers to support crypto miners, unlike what they're doing with AI.