acknowledge

With a market capitalization more than 5 billion dollarstoday Nvidia It is the most valuable company of the world, but it goes without saying that it was not always like this. In fact, and as happens in the best houses, the beginnings are difficult and if not tell Microsoft. Nvidia was also on the edge of the precipice just a couple of years after starting its journey, but it had a sort of “savior angel” who He gave them oxygen for six months: Sega. They say that being born well means being grateful and Jensen Huang traveled to Japan this week and there, in a meeting with fans to celebrate 30 years of collaboration between both companies,, He dedicated some kind words of thanks to Irimajiri Shōichirō, the former president of Sega and his savior. In addition, Huang thanked Yu Suzukicreator of Virtua Fighter, for his pioneering work in 3D as a fundamental basis for the later development of PC graphics. What happened in 1995. “In 1995, Nvidia was on the brink of bankruptcy. We had chosen the wrong technology and here we are today, the largest company in the world” Huang said. at this week’s event. At that time Nvidia had launched its first chip, the NV1. This processor’s rendering was based on curved surfaces instead of triangles. Good idea, bad timing: the all-powerful Microsoft made the triangle-based method the industry standard for PC graphics with DirectX. The NV1 fell into irrelevance. In fact, Nvidia had another order from Sega to develop its next chip for its Dreamcast console, but finally the order was canceled and instead it opted for NEC’s PowerVR chip, as reported by TechSpot. Sega’s decision. Nvidia had money left to survive 30 days, according to Tom’s Hardware. So Jensen Huang traveled to Japan with a kamikaze idea: he asked Sega to convert the pending payment into an equity investment. And he was honest: he admitted that if they invested that money in Nvidia, they would probably lose it, but if they didn’t, they would go bankrupt and have no chance. Irimajiri, who I had appreciation for that young foundersupported him and convinced the board of directors to contribute those 5 million dollars of the time And so Huang has recognized it 30 years later: “If it weren’t for what Sega did for NVIDIA, NVIDIA wouldn’t be here.” What happened next. With that money, Nvidia had half a year of margin to redirect its future and boy did it get it right: it built the RIVA 128, a triangular chip that was launched in 1997 and sold a million units in four months. Shortly after, another success would arrive, the GeForce 256 GPU. Nvidia went public in 1999 and Sega sold its shares shortly after for 15 million dollars, tripling his investment. At the time it seemed like a reasonable decision, but with hindsight things change. According to VGCciting Huang’s previous statements from a few months ago: “If I had kept that $5 million investment, today it would probably be worth close to a billion dollars because the moment we went public, they sold it (at that time Nvidia was worth $300 million). In Xataka | Jensen Huang enters the Samsung salary controversy: “Workers should earn as much as possible” In Xataka | NVIDIA was founded by three engineers, but only Jensen Huang remains CEO: “I wish I had kept some shares” Cover | Retro Sega and NVIDIA