In a stirring commencement speech at the National Taiwan University (NTU), NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang urged the graduating class to seize the opportunities that AI will present, and to embrace the inevitable failures along the way.

Huang, dressed in a black graduation robe instead of his signature black leather jacket, addressed the 10,000 graduates of the island’s premier university. His message was clear: pursue your passions with conviction and humility, and be prepared to learn from the hard lessons that life will inevitably throw your way. “Whatever it is, run after it like we did. Run. Don’t walk,” he said.

Huang, who moved from Taiwan when he was young, shared three stories of initial failures and retreat, which he said were instrumental in shaping NVIDIA’s character during its three-decade journey from a three-person gaming-graphics startup to a global AI leader worth nearly a trillion dollars.

The first story was about a key early contract that NVIDIA won to help Sega build a gaming console. Rapid changes in the industry forced NVIDIA to give up the contract, bringing the company to the brink of bankruptcy. However, with humility and the help of Sega’s leadership, NVIDIA managed to avert disaster. “Confronting our mistake and, with humility, asking for help saved NVIDIA,” he said.

The second story was about the decision in 2007 to put CUDA into all the company’s GPUs, enabling them to crunch data in addition to handling 3D graphics. This was a long-term investment that drew criticism and didn’t pay off for years until the chips started being used for machine learning. “We suffered many years of poor performance. Our shareholders were skeptical of CUDA and preferred we improve profitability,” he recalled.

The third story was about the decision in 2010 to enter the promising mobile-phone market as graphics-rich capabilities were coming into reach. However, the market quickly commoditized, and NVIDIA retreated just as quickly. This strategic retreat, though initially criticized, opened the door to investing in promising new markets — robotics and self-driving cars. “By leaving the phone market, we opened our minds to invent a new one,” he said.

Huang drew parallels between the world he entered upon graduating four decades ago, on the cusp of the PC revolution, and the brave new age of AI that the graduates are entering today. He concluded his speech by sharing some of his learnings: admit mistakes and ask for help; endure pain and suffering to realize your dreams; and make sacrifices to dedicate yourself to a life of purpose.

Source: NVIDIA Blog