The Team Behind Nvidia's Climb to be the Most Valuable Chip Supplier in the US

Late last week, Nvidia passed a new milestone by becoming the most valuable US chip supplier, a position formerly held by Intel. Nvidia’s market cap as of July 8, sat at over $248 billion while Intel was at approximately $246 billion. This new valuation also makes Nvidia the third most valuable chipmaker in the world.

Nvidia was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem as a computer graphics chip designer and manufacturer. The company saw immediate success and has proven influential in the gaming industry, as it developed the graphics hardware for Microsoft's original Xbox game console and assisted Sony with the graphics processor for its PlayStation 3 game console.

In recent years, Nvidia has expanded from its core personal computer chip business into chips for data centers, automobiles, and artificial intelligence. These new verticals have driven considerable growth for the company. For example, its data center chip business brought in $1.14 billion in data center technology sales in the first quarter of 2020, up from $634 million the year prior, rivaling the revenues from its core gaming segment.

The company’s rise is far from over, as its bets on futuristic technologies, like self-driving cars, could manifest significant returns. For instance, in June 2020, Nvidia and Mercedes-Benz inked a deal to leverage Nvidia’s GPUs and AI technology to develop autonomous driving and cloud computing solutions. The company forged a similar self-driving infrastructure deal with Didi-Chuxing (China’s answer to Uber) in December 2019. Should these deals result in viable autonomous vehicle platforms, Nvidia stands to claim a larger slice of the $38 billion automotive semiconductor market.

Nvidia's ability to reach new hights despite the global coronavirus pandemic is a testament to its team, which is leading growth into new product areas.

Rishi Dhall is the VP of Business Development for the Nvidia’s autonomous vehicle efforts and has a large role in executing the company’s play for the future of the auto industry. Dhall will be an executive to watch as Nvidia looks to develop its self-driving technology into a top-performing revenue stream, by forging landmark deals with major automotive and transportation companies.

Ian Buck, is an exec that is leading the way on Nvidia’s successful Data Center products. Buck’s title at Nvidia is VP and General Manager of Tesla Data Center Business, but his impact extends beyond management as he also created CUDA, the established standard for GPU Computing worldwide. Tesla and CUDA power supercomputers around the world and have enabled a deep learning AI revolution and are used by Google, Facebook, Amazon, Alibaba, IBM, and many more.

Company Co-Founder and CEO Jensen Huang is a star performer within Nvidia, as he has constantly led the company to new innovative growth areas. This leadership has led him to be named Harvard Business Review’s top-performing CEO in the world in 2019.

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