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Hungry startups don’t always attract the attention of big players, but in the case of You.com, founder Richard Socher got a front row seat with Nvidia’s Jensen Huang.
“I was extremely impressed with Jensen,” Socher told Yahoo Finance editor-in-chief Brian Sozzi in his Opening Bid podcast (video above; listen here).
Its AI-powered search engine recently announced a $50 million Series B round with investors including Nvidia (NVDA), Salesforce (CRM) Ventures and DuckDuckGo. The capital raise valued rivals Google (GOOG) and Yahoo at nearly $1 billion.
Socher said he met with Huang for nearly two hours around the time of the investment, discussing topics ranging from history to running a business.
“I don’t generally get nervous around most people, but it was very impressive to hear him give advice,” Socher said.
During his conversation, Socher says Huang mentioned that “he focused a lot on Nvidia’s speed in the early years.”
Ultimately, Nvidia chose to pivot a bit to gain focus.
“At some point they realized the best way was to focus on gaming first and really dominate that niche,” Socher said, adding that Huang suggested staying focused on You.com’s mission to be a To be an AI-powered alternative to Google.
This isn’t the first time Socher and Nvidia have crossed paths.
In early 2010, his research group at Stanford was using Nvidia GPUs. At the time, Nvidia mainly sold GPU products to the graphics sector. “Nvidia said, ‘who are you? Why are you trying to buy our GPUs,” Socher said, noting that GPUs now help with the company’s AI workloads.
Nvidia was launched in 1993 – born from Huang’s scribbles on a napkin at a Denny’s – to develop 3D graphics for gaming and multimedia purposes. At that time, more and more consumers were venturing into computing, leading to the demand for higher-powered computers.
Six years later, Nvidia introduced graphics processing units (GPU) and in 2012 it brought AI to the forefront by introducing the AlexNet neural network.
This summer, Nvidia introduced an initiative that would bring generative AI to a wider audience using the latest GPU technology. The company’s AI chips are believed to have a big performance lead over rivals AMD (AMD) and Intel (INTC), leading to impressive financial results over the past two years.
Nvidia’s second-quarter revenue and profit rose 122% and 152%, respectively, from the previous year.
After a decline in the summer following mixed expectations for the third quarter, Nvidia is now the third most valuable company in the world. It has a market capitalization of $2.98 trillion, while Microsoft has $3.18 trillion and Apple has $3.46 trillion, according to Yahoo Finance’s comparison tool.
Year-to-date, shares are up 145%, compared with an 18% gain for the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite.
Three times a week, Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi fields full of insights and chats with the biggest names in business and markets Opening bid. You can find more episodes on our videohub or check your favorite streaming service.
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