Hey NVIDIA, What's Up?

by Taro Porschke

Jensen Huang, CEO and co-founder of NVIDIA, is now the Taylor Swift of tech (self-acknowledged).

“I hope you realize this is not a concert; you have arrived at a developers’ conference. There will be a lot of science, algorithms, computer architecture, and mathematics,” said Jensen Huang at NVIDIA GTC, a conference at which there were at least 11,000 attendees. Image credit: Richard Nieva, X

But why?

Although the AI craze isn't as high now as it was a couple of months ago, it's still impossible to dismiss. AI stocks are booming right now, and it's hard to tell what the future holds. Most notably, NVIDIA has stood out among the crowd. Looking at YTD (Year-To-Date), as of May 17, NVIDIA (NVDA) reached its peak of $950.02 on March 25 (and it's close to hitting it again right now), while Apple (AAPL) reached its lowest point in more than a year at $165.00 on April 19. As well as this, NVDA's 2.33 trillion dollar market cap is quickly chasing AAPL's 2.92T. So, what's up?

NVIDIA, a name that doesn't really mean anything (being a combination of the acronym NV, short for next vision, and the Latin word for envy, invidia) is a name that usually only gamers or computer hardware enthusiasts would have known a decade back. NVIDIA has led the world of GPUs (graphics processing units) for a while now, its only real competitor having been AMD, but who knew it would grow so large, so quickly - and why now?

NVIDIA first saw great publicity during the peak of the pandemic for two reasons: bored people, and bored people who wanted to get rich, the former of which being aspiring gamers & influencers, and the latter of which being crypto enthusiasts. GPUs were necessary for crypto-mining since they were able to perform the mathematical computations necessary to improve mining efficiency. And, take a wild guess as to who offered the best GPUs on the market: yes, it's NVIDIA. That's why, among other things (like chip shortages), it was so difficult to get your hands on a good GPU back then for a reasonable price.

However, now that the crypto craze has somewhat subsided, NVIDIA found its next big hit - AI. There are a bunch of ideas and arguments as to why AI is booming right now and why everyone is rushing to invest in it, however, whether it is to revolutionize the workspace, improve our creative capability, or use it for the military, the most probable and uninteresting answer is that we just finally have the technology and hardware to approach and use AI. That hardware, you guessed it, includes NVIDIA's important GPUs. Like in crypto mining, NVIDIA's GPUs offer unparalleled mathematical prowess in building and developing AI models.

Already, we're seeing corporate applications of AI everywhere. The customer service industry is starting to be steadily replaced by AI, and using AI for advice and guidance is becoming increasingly popular, evident here at Columbus, with Chat-GPT, of course. AI might not be the most accurate yet, it's far from perfect, but it is undoubtedly improving by the day.

Regardless, the AI craze is not something that should be ignored and looked over. AI will likely play an important role in our future, like how the internet changed society, and will definitely complicate things in job markets. For now, though, we will have to wait and see how things play out, and if NVIDIA will continue its upward streak.