Deal Flow
← Founders Archive

Co-founder & CEO · Nvidia

Jensen Huang

Planned Nvidia in a Denny's booth and survived years of near-bankruptcy.

Founded
1993
HQ
Santa Clara, CA
Sector
Semiconductors
Company
Nvidia
“Our company is thirty days from going out of business.

The story in brief

Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 with Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, betting that PCs would need dedicated 3D graphics chips.

After a first chip missed the market, the RIVA 128 saved the company in 1997. CUDA, launched in 2006, turned GPUs into general-purpose computers — and later into the engine of modern AI.

Read the full story · 7 min readBorn in a Denny's Booth: How Jensen Huang Kept Nvidia Alive Long Enough to Power the AI Boom→

Lessons for founders

01

Survive long enough for your best idea to matter

02

Platforms beat products

03

Let one market fund the next

The Daily Archi · 5-minute read

Get the future in your inbox.

Every morning: the rounds that closed, the founders worth knowing and the one chart that explains the market.

✓ Free forever✓ Unsubscribe in one click✓ No paid placements in editorial