NVIDIA CEO Delivers Caltech Graduation Tackle

NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang on Friday inspired Caltech graduates to pursue their craft with dedication and resilience — and to view setbacks as new alternatives.

“I hope you imagine in one thing. One thing unconventional, one thing unexplored. However let it’s knowledgeable, and let it’s reasoned, and dedicate your self to creating that occur,” he mentioned. “You could discover your GPU. You could discover your CUDA. You could discover your generative AI. You could discover your NVIDIA.”

Buying and selling his signature leather-based jacket for black and yellow tutorial regalia, Huang addressed the almost 600 graduates at their graduation ceremony in Pasadena, Calif., beginning with the story of the computing business’s decades-long evolution to achieve this pivotal second of AI transformation.

“Computer systems at the moment are the only most essential instrument of information, and it’s foundational to each single business in each area of science,” Huang mentioned. “As you enter business, it’s essential you already know what’s occurring.”

He shared how, over a decade in the past, NVIDIA — a small firm on the time — guess on deep studying, investing billions of {dollars} and years of engineering sources to reinvent each computing layer.

“Nobody knew how far deep studying might scale, and if we didn’t construct it, we’d by no means know,” Huang mentioned. Referencing the well-known line from Area of Desires — in the event you construct it, he’ll come — he mentioned, “Our logic is: If we don’t construct it, they will’t come.”

Trying to the long run, Huang mentioned, the subsequent wave of AI is robotics, a area the place NVIDIA’s journey resulted from a collection of setbacks.

He mirrored on a interval in NVIDIA’s previous when the corporate annually constructed new merchandise that “can be extremely profitable, generate huge quantities of pleasure. After which one yr later, we had been kicked out of these markets.”

These roadblocks pushed NVIDIA to hunt out untapped areas — what Huang refers to as “zero-billion-dollar markets.”

“With no extra markets to show to, we determined to construct one thing the place we’re certain there aren’t any clients,” Huang mentioned. “As a result of one of many issues you possibly can positively assure is the place there aren’t any clients, there are additionally no opponents.”

Robotics was that new market. NVIDIA constructed the primary robotics laptop, Huang mentioned, processing a deep studying algorithm. Over a decade later, that pivot has given the corporate the chance to create the subsequent wave of AI.

“One setback after one other, we shook it off and skated to the subsequent alternative. Every time, we acquire expertise and strengthen our character,” Huang mentioned. “No setback that comes our approach doesn’t seem like a chance nowadays.”

Huang pressured the significance of resilience and agility as superpowers that strengthen character.

“The world may be unfair and deal you with robust playing cards. Swiftly shake it off,” he mentioned, with a tongue-in-cheek reference to certainly one of Taylor Swift’s largest hits. “There’s one other alternative on the market — or create one.”

Huang concluded by sharing a narrative from his travels to Japan, the place, as he watched a gardener painstakingly tending to Kyoto’s well-known moss backyard, he realized that when an individual is devoted to their craft and prioritizes doing their life’s work, they all the time have loads of time.

“Prioritize your life,” he mentioned, “and you’ll have loads of time to do the essential issues.”

Important picture courtesy of Caltech.