#10 Nvidia, Nvidia, Nvidia!

Nvidia has been through a roller-coaster of a ride in the last few months, and if you haven't been living under a rock, you must have at least heard the company’s name. When I first heard of Nvidia years back, all I knew was that the company makes “chips”. That was about it.

After that, like the rest of the world, I forgot about Nvidia. It now surely is placed at a level that everyone will be talking about Nvidia for years to come. But the question presents itself still: what does Nvidia do, and why is everyone suddenly talking about it?

Here are some facts about the trillion-dollar company that will help you stay updated (and also make for ice breakers 😀):

• From its founding in 1993 till date, Jensen Huang has served as the founder as well as the CEO of Nvidia, marking more than 30 years. It is remarkable to note that Huang’s net worth rose from USD 3 billion in 2019 to USD 90 billion in 2024, just 5 short years. Truly tells you anything is possible if you stick to it long enough. Huang’s worth is expected to have crossed USD 100 billion when Nvidia’s shares rose further.

• Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft have been in a game of back-and-forth over claiming the spot for the company with the most market capitalization. Market capitalization means the total dollar value of all outstanding shares at the current market price. Or more simply,

  market cap = price per share * total outstanding shares

  As the price per share fluctuates every day, hence does the market cap.

  You will have to keep checking every week to see who’s number 1.

  Till date, Microsoft > Apple > Nvidia.

• Nvidia’s share price has risen about 156.47% (75.37 USD) in the last 6 months. This also caused the company to announce a stock split. Think of a pizza having 6 slices. If the whole pizza was one share before, then a 6:1 split will cause each single slice to become a new share, making a total of 6 new shares from the existing 1 share. Nvidia did this in the ratio of 10:1. Companies do this to make the stock more affordable, and hence ensuring it can be accessible for more investors.

  

  Shares of Nvidia, as on 28th June, 2024.

• “Suffering from success”, has commonly been used to describe Nvidia’s employees, as a staggering 76% of them are estimated to be millionaires, a number not seen (yet) for any other company.

• While everyone has been focussing on AI software, Nvidia has been focussing on AI hardware. To power artificial intelligence (AI), you need a lot and lot of one thing for sure: Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). So, while Nvidia hasn’t been at the forefront of the AI software race, it certainly is the number one for AI hardware, and will remain so till the bubble bursts. The company’s strong hold is so much so, that other chip makers such as Intel and AMD, are far behind in the race.

• Nvidia’s Unique Selling Proposition (USP, a feature that distinguishes the product from others) is it’s GPUs, particularly the H100’s. The hardware has apparently become so valuable that they are transported via special security to data centres, in literal armoured cars.

  

  Sourced from a Whatsapp group.

Nvidia’s growth has been exponential. It has established itself as a key player in the AI industry, providing for other companies the best quality hardware needed to power AI.

If you have any feedback for any of my posts, you can reply to this email or reach out to me via my socials (added below).

PS. If you like my newsletters, feel free to share them with your friends and family!

If this was shared with you, you can subscribe here:

Reminder: Don’t forgot to move my emails to your primary inbox to make sure you keep receiving them!