1993: The Decision on His Thirtieth Birthday

In January of 49 BC, the Roman general Julius Caesar was marching south with his legions after finishing his campaign in Gaul. Before him flowed a river called the Rubicon. It was a small river. On horseback, you could cross it in moments. But this river carried the weight of law.

Roman law forbade any general leading an army from crossing this river into Rome. Cross it, and you become a traitor. Don't cross it, and your political enemies take everything from you.

Caesar stood at the riverbank and thought for a long time. Then he spoke.

"The die is cast."

He crossed the river. He chose the path from which there was no return.

Every great figure in history who made a decisive choice had their own Rubicon to cross.

In 1993, in California's Silicon Valley, such a river appeared before a young man approaching his thirtieth birthday. His name was Jensen Huang.

February 17, 1993. Jensen Huang turned thirty. The ancient Chinese sage Confucius called the age of thirty 'erli,' meaning the age when one stands on one's own. The age when one establishes an unwavering purpose. But for Jensen Huang, the number thirty carried a meaning more concrete than that. It was the hour of a promise kept.

Let us turn the story back a few years. The electrical engineering lab at Oregon State University. Seventeen-year-old Jensen Huang met a young woman there. Her name was Lori. She was a student in the same department. The two became lab partners, then friends, then lovers. One day Jensen told Lori:

"By the time I'm thirty, I'll be a CEO."

It was the bold declaration of a seventeen-year-old. It could have been the kind of bluster any young man utters in front of the person he loves. Did Lori believe him? Did she not?

What matters is that Jensen Huang himself never forgot those words. Years passed, the two married, and the age of thirty was approaching.

Let us look at where Jensen Huang stood in 1993. He was working at a semiconductor company called LSI Logic. His title was Director. Before that, he had designed microprocessors at AMD, the well-known chip company. He held a master's degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University. His salary was high, and he had earned the respect of those around him. He was, by any measure, a successful engineer.

Most people would have been satisfied with this. A stable job, a comfortable income, a respected position. For a young immigrant from Taiwan who had come to America, achieving this level of success was remarkable. His mother thought so too. She told her son:

"Why don't you look for a good job?"

In his mother's eyes, her son was doing well enough as things were. There was no need to take unnecessary risks. But a different idea had been growing inside Jensen Huang's mind.

He was reading the shifts taking place in the computer industry.

1993 was a time when personal computers were spreading rapidly. As Microsoft's Windows operating system reached the masses, computers were no longer machines reserved for specialists. But Jensen Huang saw something beyond that.

The future of computers lies not in text, but in images.

At the time, most computer screens were filled with text. Making spreadsheets in Excel and writing documents in word processors were the primary uses of a computer.

As for graphics, simple two-dimensional images were all there was. Three-dimensional, or 3D, graphics were a technology possible only on specialized workstations costing tens of thousands of dollars. The idea of playing 3D games on a home PC sounded like something out of a science fiction movie.

But Jensen Huang saw it differently.

He was certain that before long, 3D graphics would become possible on PCs. And he resolved that he would be the one to build the chip that made it happen.

As his thirtieth birthday drew closer, the urgency in his heart grew.

Would he stay on the comfortable bank of a secure job, or leap into the rough current of starting a company? He had to choose one of two paths. He remembered the promise he had made to his wife Lori. The words about becoming a CEO by thirty.

Jensen Huang made his decision. He would leave LSI Logic.

It meant burning the bridge behind him. If he failed, he could lose everything. The stable job, the high salary, the respected position could all vanish. But he chose to trust his own instinct. He knew where the future of technology was headed. At least, he believed he did.

When Caesar crossed the Rubicon, he cried out, "The die is cast." Jensen Huang threw his own die. It was 1993. He was thirty years old. He crossed the river.

Three young men in a corner booth at Denny's

Every legendary Silicon Valley company has its birthplace.

Apple started in the garage of Steve Jobs's parents' house. Hewlett-Packard was born in a garage in Palo Alto. There's even a saying in Silicon Valley: "Great companies start in garages."

Nvidia was different.

This company wasn't born in a garage. It was born in a family restaurant. The name was Denny's, an ordinary 24-hour chain with locations across the United States.

Berryessa Road in San Jose, California. The Denny's there held a special meaning for Jensen Huang. It was where he first worked at age fifteen. He washed dishes, cleared tables, carried food to customers. It was also the place where a shy immigrant boy learned how to talk to strangers.

In 1993, Jensen Huang, now thirty, returned to Denny's. This time he hadn't come to wash dishes. He had come to start a company.

Two people came with him.

Chris Malachowsky. He was an engineer at Sun Microsystems, a well-known computer company.

Curtis Priem. Also from Sun Microsystems, he was a veteran technologist who had worked at IBM as well.

The three of them settled into a corner booth at Denny's. A booth is a seat with high backs that creates a semi-private space away from other diners. They sat down and ordered coffee.

Why Denny's, of all places? Jensen Huang later explained it this way.

"It was quieter than home, and the coffee was cheap."

Denny's offered free refills on coffee. Pay for one cup and you could drink as many as you wanted. The three young men took full advantage. They would meet in the morning and stay until evening, sitting in the same spot, talking for hours. Refilling their coffee ten cups at a time.

Jensen Huang later looked back on those days.

"The waitstaff probably wanted to kick us out."

Customers who barely ordered food but occupied a table for hours on end. The restaurant couldn't have been happy about it. But the Denny's staff never chased them away. Thanks to that, the three young men could talk as long as they pleased.

What were they talking about?

3D graphics.

At the time, the personal computer screen was a two-dimensional world.

But change was happening in the world of games.

Arcade game centers already had games running 3D graphics. Hollywood films were using more and more computer graphics. The movie Jurassic Park, released in 1993, stunned audiences around the world by making computer-generated dinosaurs look as if they were alive and moving.

The three young men had an idea.

Soon, home PCs would be able to run 3D graphics like these. And they would be the ones to build the chip that made it possible.

The CPU, the central processing unit, serves as a computer's brain. It is the core component that handles all calculations.

But rendering 3D graphics requires a staggering number of calculations. For each of the millions of pixels on screen, the system must compute where the light comes from, how colors shift, and how objects move.

A CPU alone couldn't handle that workload.

The three young men had an idea.

Build a dedicated chip to help the CPU. Create a new brain devoted solely to graphics processing.

This was the beginning of what would later be called the GPU, the graphics processing unit.

A napkin lay spread on the table. They sketched circuit diagrams on it and scribbled down ideas.

Inside that restaurant, where the smell of pancake syrup hung in the air, the three young men's eyes were shining.

They divided up the roles.

Chris Malachowsky would handle the hardware design.

Curtis Priem would take charge of chip architecture and algorithms.

Jensen Huang would be responsible for business strategy and management.

Curtis Priem asked Jensen Huang a question.

"You're going to be CEO, right?"

Jensen Huang nodded. The promise he had made to Lori at seventeen was about to become reality. Choosing a company name turned out to be no simple task either. At first they considered 'NVision,' a name meant to suggest 'new vision.' But a company with that exact name already existed. It was apparently a toilet paper manufacturer.

They needed a name. They flipped through a Latin dictionary.

That was when they found the word 'invidia.'

It meant 'envy.' Curtis Priem said:

"Let's make something that turns our competitors green with envy."

And so the company had its name. NVIDIA. Taken from the Latin word for envy.

April 5, 1993. Jensen Huang went to see a lawyer to officially register the company. The lawyer's name was James Gaither. He asked Jensen Huang for the capital required to incorporate. Jensen Huang dug through his pockets. He had 200 dollars. The lawyer said that would be enough.

Jensen Huang called Chris and Curtis.

"Can you each put in 200 dollars?"

Both of them did.

NVIDIA's initial capital came to 600 dollars. Converted to Korean won, that is roughly 700,000 won. The fact that a company now worth trillions of dollars started with 700,000 won is, by any measure, astonishing.

That corner booth at Denny's. Nobody knew then that the drawings three young men sketched on a napkin would one day change the world.

A declaration to create a market where none existed

NVIDIA had been founded. But there was a problem. They had a product to sell, yet no one to sell it to.

In 1993, who would buy a 3D graphics chip?

PC users were perfectly content running Excel and word processors.

Some people loved games, but most thought 2D graphics were good enough. 3D gaming itself barely existed yet.

Jensen Huang went around meeting investors. The responses were cold.

"We can see your technology is impressive. But who's going to buy it? Where's the market?"

The investors' questions were reasonable.

To start a business, you need a market. You need customers who will buy your product. But the market for what NVIDIA wanted to build did not exist. It was a zero-dollar market.

Jensen Huang called it the "Zero Billion Dollar Market." A market worth zero dollars at present. A market with nothing in it. And yet that was exactly where he aimed.

An ordinary executive would have looked for a market that already existed.

Grabbing even a small share of a large market is the safe strategy. Business textbooks say the same thing. But Jensen Huang thought differently. "We're not going to fight over market share. We're going to create the market."

It was a bold declaration. He was saying he would build a market where none existed. To anyone asking whether the chicken or the egg came first, he was answering that he would lay the egg himself.

His logic went like this.

If we build an affordable, powerful 3D graphics chip, game developers will use that chip to create 3D games.

Once 3D games appear, gamers will buy our chip to play those games.

Once the chips sell, we can build even better chips.

Better chips will produce better games. A virtuous cycle begins.

Jensen Huang focused on video games. Why games, of all things? He explained it this way.

"Gaming is the only field that poses the hardest technical challenge while also commanding the highest sales volume."

Building a 3D game requires enormous computing power, because the screen must be rendered in real time. A movie can show pre-drawn images. Games are different. The scene must change instantly depending on where the player looks. That is an extremely difficult technical problem.

At the same time, games sell in massive quantities.

You watch a movie once and you're done, but people play games over and over. A hit title sells millions, even tens of millions of copies. High sales volume means more money to invest in research and development. That was the opening Jensen Huang was targeting.

Reality, though, was unforgiving.

NVIDIA's first product, the NV1, was a failure.

The performance was solid, but it was too expensive. On top of that, it did not conform to the standards Microsoft had set. Insisting on proprietary technology turned out to be the fatal mistake. The product did not sell, and the company was driven to the brink of bankruptcy.

Jensen Huang later recalled the situation like this.

"We always worked as if we were 30 days away from going out of business."

Thirty days. One month. That was how close they were to shutting down. There was no money to pay employees. Funding for continued R&D was running out. In the five years after founding the company, they faced bankruptcy three separate times.

Still, Jensen Huang refused to give up. He cut his own salary to one dollar. The CEO would take just one dollar. It was a message to his employees: I believe in this company, and I've staked my future on it. I'm asking you to believe, too.

Then he changed direction.

Instead of insisting on proprietary technology, he decided to follow Microsoft's standards. The team developed a new product called the NV3. This time, the market responded well. The company survived.

In 1999, NVIDIA finally released something the world had never seen: the GeForce 256. Alongside this product, Jensen Huang coined a new term. GPU. Graphics Processing Unit. Before that, no product had carried such a name. He was the one who gave it that name.

It was the moment when the dream sketched on a napkin at Denny's in 1993 became real.

Jensen Huang later said:

"If I had known how hard it would be to start a company, I probably never would have started one."

His ignorance became his courage. Because he didn't know, he wasn't afraid. Because he wasn't afraid, he could take the leap.

When Caesar crossed the Rubicon, there was no guarantee he would win. When Jensen Huang founded NVIDIA, there was no guarantee he would succeed. But both men crossed the river. And both changed history.

In September 2023, Jensen Huang returned to that Denny's. The same restaurant where he had discussed his startup thirty years earlier. Denny's CEO Kelli Valade greeted him. She presented him with a plaque. A nameplate was affixed to the corner booth where he had sat.

"The booth where a trillion-dollar company was born."

Jensen Huang stood at that spot and said:

"Get your first job at a restaurant. Working in a restaurant teaches you what it means to work hard. You learn humility. You learn kindness."

A fifteen-year-old boy washing dishes. A thirty-year-old man crossing the Rubicon. A CEO past sixty leading one of the world's most valuable companies. All of it is one person's story.

His declaration that he would create a market where none existed came true. The 3D graphics chip market has grown to hundreds of billions of dollars. And the GPU did not remain a chip just for gaming. As a new world called artificial intelligence opened up, the GPU became the heart that powers it. We will return to this story later in the book.

What we should remember now is this: the decision three young men made that day in 1993, in a corner booth at Denny's, opened the door to the age of artificial intelligence.

The die was cast. And it landed on numbers that would change the world.