The rise and fall of leather jacket-clad tech ‘godfather’ Jensen Huang

Résumé détaillé

Nvidia’s boss was the champion of selling cutting-edge AI chips to China. Now he’s lost his credibility – and a $US4 trillion company.

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Three decades ago, there was a breakthrough: computers were going to be able to display “frenzied” 3D imagery in colour. Personal computers, this masthead reported in September 1995, would be able to match the “dizzying pace as the most advanced arcade game,” powered by chips created by a little known, privately held Silicon Valley firm called Nvidia.

Founded by a 30-year-old Taiwanese American prodigy called Jensen Huang in 1993, Nvidia became a household name, at least for gamers. It listed on the stock exchange as part of the dot com boom in 1999 at $US12, survived the crash and stayed a respectable performer for the next 20 years.

Then in 2022, ChatGPT arrived, the world realised that Nvidia’s chips were driving the artificial intelligence revolution – and Jensen Huang transformed from a cult figure to something akin to a statesman, presiding over arguably the world’s most important company. One of his 60-odd leather jackets, which he has been wearing since the early 2000s, sold at a charity auction in July for $US960,000.

Now, after revelations that Huang had engaged in one affair with an alleged Chinese spy, and two more alleged affairs with subordinates, Nvidia has lost the only chief executive it has ever known. Huang, who resigned on Friday (AEDT), has lost the company he built into a $US4.2 trillion ($6 trillion) powerhouse and more than $US10 billion of his net worth, according to Forbes. The AI debate has lost its most powerful voice in favour of closer ties between the United States and China. And data centre companies such as Australia’s Iren, Firmus and Sharon AI have lost a champion of complex financing deals that have spurred their rise.

So sharp has the fall been in Nvidia’s share price, and so large is the company – accounting for about 5 per cent of the value of all companies, everywhere, combined – that it has taken about a quarter of one per cent off the…

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Début de l'article, extrait de The Sydney Morning Herald. Pour lire la suite, ouvrez l'article chez le média.