Beyond what he did or what his intentions were, my focus is on what will happen to the AI industry. Jensen Huang was the face of Nvidia and to a large extent Nvidia provided the oxygen for the industry
Title: Instead Of Lowering GPU Prices, Former NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang Reportedly Financed AI Startups To Absorb Excess Silicon, Shattering The Shortage Perception
I read the article, and it doesn't say he did that.
The article sounds to me like Jensen was attempting to maximize revenues and profits for the company he ran, like a CEO is supposed to.
Is Nvidia profiting from globally constrained wafer capacity ? Absolutely.
Does their strategy account for supply constraints ? Absolutely.
Isn't this what corporations are supposed to do ? Adapt, pivot, profit ?
I think everyones just jealous and frustrated right now, and the frustrated decided they didnt want to see leather jacket man getting laid while sipping Dom.
People are petty like that, especially in large crowds.
> I read the article, and it doesn't say he did that.
When you say "that", what exactly do you mean? What didn't he do that the article says he did?
Because the rest of your comment then seemingly proceeds to outline that, actually, yes, that's exactly what he did, but that you also think that's what anyone in his position should do. Which is less of a statement of what Huang did and more of one about what you think should be acceptable in a sane market.
Not everything that leads to higher short term profit is OK thing to do for CEO.
The stock was bound to tank either way, with more or kess long term damage for the company. Board decided for less long term damage and the "we are fixing it" play.
> Jensen is likely to keep getting scapegoated.
It is not being scapegoat when you were the ring leader.
i think its hilarious u kids talking shit about jensen. u wouldnt say this shit to him in taiwan, hes jacked. not only that but he wears the freshest clothes, eats at the chillest restaurants and hangs out with the hottest subordinates. yall are pathetic lol
One thing that I find quite amazing about this whole event is the way in which cheating is now much much more acceptable than in the past...not saying it's a good or a bad thing, but it's pretty wild how many people are like, "The guy was just doing what rich guys do..."
I view his infidelity as a broken contract between him and his wife.
And thats not any of my business.
Maybe she's a harpie whos terrible in bed.
Maybe its his ego. Maybe he works and pays them no attention.
The possibilities there are endless and unknowable.
If he violated an Nvidia policy with a coworker, then the board is likely within its pervue to say something about it.
They did, and the stock tanked.
Fire the board.
Rule by committee is powerful. You have 5 people backing each other up publicly. Especially when they are the ones who f'd up.
More power than the 150,000 signatures at https://standwithjensen.com/ ... help grow the number if you feel so compelled.
We're the audience, and they are writing the narrative which suits them best at that moment.
Go back to 2022 when this story arc started, and the US took its #1 GPU off the market in China, and trace the chess moves on all sides.
Jensen got scapegoated by the Machiavellians.
Now, they begin testing how compliant and subservient the new CEO is. The one whos feelings were hurt during a meeting. Lets not forget Trumps suggestion that Tim Cook take the job.
Someone generate the Price is Right mountain climber game meme, with Nvidia going over the cliff, because thats what just happened.
If you will “break a contract” with someone as close to you as your spouse why would I want to do business with you? It’s pretty obvious you’ll stab me in the back the first chance you get.
Just like infidelity and divorce is good when the marriage was doomed due to personality conflicts.
It frees 2 miserable people, to find 2 other people, to potentially create the optimal condition of 4 content people.
The behaviors of the contract signers in the real world seems to be far more important than any recorded words on paper.
The US government and its leadership break promises repeatedly. Endless memes about things politicians say and do. Its citizens aren't defecting en mass because of it.
You're making a lot of assumptions about a relationship you weren't a part of, here.
They were together since early college, she sacrificed her career to support him (his words). Nobody's obligated to stay in a relationship if they're unhappy but cheating with multiple people is wrong.
Ok, but in the hypothetical, a dignified divorce is still the right way to handle it. Banging a bunch of people on the side is the wrong way to handle it.
Of course without being able to fill in the assumptions about the relationship we cannot know if cheating occurred or not.
Cheating requires one to gain an unfair advantage in a relationship. Simply having sex with someone else does not automatically give an unfair advantage.
Not specifically related to sex as we can find other uses in the literature, such as cheating as it relates to the economic side of the relationship. However, you are right that it is most commonly associated with sex. What is consistent in the usage, whether it is about sex, economics, whatever, is the unfair advantage part. We do not call it cheating if the playing field is considered to be level, such as like in what we call open relationships.
Cheating, more specifically, in a relationship refers to a situation where one party restrains themselves from something (like sex with other people, most commonly, but could also be something like spending money) under the understanding that the other party is doing the same, but where the other party is not. The cheating party is seen as having an unfair advantage because they are willing to maintain the appearance of mutual restraint, shaping the behaviour of the other party, without behaving in kind.
Without knowing the intimate details of the Huang relationship, we cannot say how that applies to them. Ms. Huang (the wife, not the alleged Chinese spy) is an older woman now, and, like many older women, may not even have sexual desire anymore. There is no mutual restraint to be found if one party lacks interests in need of restraint. This is why we also see the "dead bedroom", where the uninterested party maintains the perception of mutual restraint but without exercising restraint themselves, show up as being referred to as cheating.
Your surface-level interpretation isn't exactly wrong, but completely misses all the nuance.
It’s because you’re surrounded by people who think they’re currently paying their dues, and want the same leeways afforded to them once they have their bag.
The embaressed short term poor, or something. They definitely think if thy pull for the billionaires, they'll get the same treatment once their <insert inane AI based plot device> takes off.
Whole lot of ZIRP era tech workers, from PMs to software developers, still got it in their head their about to rocket with their latest vibe coded Android first basic af notepad app for $50/download... made up example but that's the wackery around me
Imo we ought to force the point that token sales are just reselling electricity; Claude and GPT are just wrapper apps around the electrical grid.
Lots of people suspect that it's the affairs with 2 employees. Yes those were bad and created civil liability for the company. Yes, there are likely more because there's no reason someone who will do 2 will stop at that number.
My suspicion is that there's coordination between Jensen Huang and Lutnick to avoid the law that Congress passed to prevent top tier Nvidia GPUs from reaching Chinese clients and that the Board has some suspicion / evidence about someone chasing that thread. The company is now fielding investigations from the FBI / DoJ, investigative short sellers, the world's largest news media organization, etc.
The questions they are getting likely inform the questions they asked Huang and they clearly don't think the answers he gave them suggested the company could weather this storm with him at the helm.
What I say instead is that we all assume it was cheating, but maybe it was just a mutual deal he had with his longtime wife as many do.
But that won’t fly in puritanical America, hence apologies etc…
The cheating angle is indeed bigoted and normie.
Many people asked the same question, why apologize and say "I hurt my family etc", he should've said, "My wife and I had agreed that my extra-marital affairs were totally fine..." ?
As someone who lives in Asia, there are quite different attitudes towards this kind of thing, but an emotional love affair is still really off the table even if visiting sex workers isn't, so I don't think it's jut a puritan thing?
One tells the people that you made a mistake and seek forgiveness, the other challenges the entire institution of marriage which is shots fired in puritanical America.
Unless you actually want to get into battle over what marriage is, is it worth it? There are no doubt some HN users that would love the battle, but I suspect someone who rose up to run a trillion dollar company is not the type of person who wants to sit around debating social norms day in, day out.
Why not make up the bullshit and move on with life?
As dubious as it is, if the claim of Huang manufacturing a shortage is true then revenue was not maximized.
A shortage occurs when demand exceeds supply. In a normally functioning market price rises to see demand back away until demand meets supply. In order for demand to continue to exceed supply, a shortage, you must have a situation where price is prevented from rising, which, if Huang was behind it, means that Huang was purposefully rejecting better offers to keep the price below the market value. Thus revenue was artificially capped below what could have been.
This is wrong on economics, if nvidia can't produce anymore, then they prefer a shortage to equilibrium or surplus in order to sell what they can produce at higher prices.
If they had fully elastic production, or more competitors, things would be different.
If, all else equal, price rises then demand declines. Nobody has an unlimited budget. The higher the price, the fewer people who can maintain their willingness as a buyer. You are in a very unique position if you have never experienced "nope, that's too much money for that, I'm out".
If demand continues to decline then you end up in equilibrium or surplus. The only way to maintain a shortage is to not allow price to rise. Equilibrium is the ideal spot for a business — maximum revenue without having to carry costly inventory.
If you can only manufacture 1,000 widgets per year, and there is demand, then you want to sell all 1,000 at the highest price possible.
If you have the ability to produce infinite widgets, then you produce to maximize the supply/demand curve in Econ 101 and reach that equilibrium spot with the spherical cows.
Nvidia had fixed supply, so of course they want as high a price as possible.
Exactly. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume one person buys one widget. That means having 2,000 people willing to buy 1,000 widgets (demand exceeds supply) is not the best situation for a business. Better is to push the price higher until only 1,000 willing buyers for 1,000 widgets remain (supply meets demand). If you can do that, you can't have a shortage.
Having 2,000 willing buyers for 1,000 widgets means you are leaving money on the table. As is obvious if you've ever been to a live action, not all potential buyers will "nope, I'm out" at the exact same price-point. With 2,000 willing buyers for 1,000 widgets there is room for the price to go higher.
If it is true that Jensen manufactured a shortage, where demand exceeds supply, the getting locked into a 2,000 buyers for 1,000 widgets scenario, then the earlier commenter has it right: revenue was not maximized. However, the likelihood of Jensen doing such a thing is highly unlikely. What would be the motivation? While it is technically possible for vendors to setup a shortage situation, in the real world shortages typically only happen when the government gets involved (e.g. price gouging laws). Usually vendors want to see the price rise.
It's fun how any reasoning about laws, morals and ethics immediately shuts down in most Americans once it's made known that the evil is undertaken for profit. Ever since their country pivoted to this ideology in the 80s, normal people stuck to it, not because it seemingly made anything better but because it's the ideology they believe.
If I ran a for-profit hospital in the US that made a bit extra on the side by sapping a bit of blood, plasma or taking tiny bits of skin during unrelated surgeries, people would be arguing that I'm just enacting my divine duty as CEO and that it's immoral to stop the holy pursuit of profit for any reason. In fact anyone who dares to criticise me is just jealous of how much money I'm making, they're the true evil.
Profiteering is seen as this uncontrollable force of nature, you're supposed to put your head down and wait for it to destroy rational markets, honest practices and non-abusive conduct like a tornado destroying your hometown. And don't you dare suggest that what's happening is bad.
> The article sounds to me like Jensen was attempting to maximize revenues and profits for the company he ran, like a CEO is supposed to.
Oh please. Can we end this dogma already? This is an excuse to exploit workers, create cartels, enshittify products, do stock buybacks instead of R&D and people like you rationalize this as "business as usual".
Might as well say "a country is supposed to extend its borders".
The behaviors we observe in the world do not happen at random.
The behaviors of corporations are a direct result of laws and court cases that govern them, in the areas they operate in.
Their entire purpose for existing is to generate profits for shareholders, while producing a product that likely couldn't otherwise be produced by a small group of people. ie. resource pooling.
Part of the profit does in fact come from "exploiting workers" as you put it, by paying them some percentage less than their output is worth.
So why do workers agree to this ? Because they know they benefit from the shared infrastructure and combined effort of others.
Each party, the corporation, and the worker, believe they made a good choice when they negotiated the terms of their employment.
Unless you were kidnapped. Were you kidnapped ? Because thats a completely different scenario ...
“Their [corporations] entire purpose for existing is to generate profits for shareholders”
You’re citing a belief that Wall Street adopted in the 70s and 80s. Are you contending that corporations didn’t exist before that or that everyone had a mistaken view of corporations before that?
> Kress publicly defended Nvidia’s role as a banker to the broader AI industry from critics who argue Nvidia’s efforts to prop up demand across the industry has left it more vulnerable to a downturn. Kress has characterized the deals as savvy investments.
> “We recognize the scale of this support, and we know some will call this circular financing. We see it differently,” she said in late August. “The equity returns on our invested capital will be excellent.”
So, at least publicly, the new CEO agreed with financing AI startups. There is no indication that Huang manufactured the GPU shortages as the original article suggests.
Exactly. I have read the wsj article when it came out, and read the wcc article now and was like, this is not how I remembered it, and went back to check wsj article again.
Wcc should name their sources, or stfu. Now it seems like they are manufacturing a lie
Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and those two other clowns LARPing as a cloud, give away cloud credits.
As a big player, you want startups on your "platform", using your tooling, speaking and coding in your vernacular, in your flavors of things and mindsets on ways of doing things.
The first sample is free. Feels great the first time around.
But migrating isn't trivial. Vendor lock-in. A few quarters later, the user is scraping for more. Some startups sought to be acquired to be able to continue to fund their AWS costs because they can't do their own IT.
Check out the licensing on CUDA code as it pertains to silicon, it's gnarly. Stallman would double plus disapprove that one!
How many ML teams do you know, sans the one legit DevOps guy, have a genuinely agile mindset (as programmers define it) to gracefully pivot to non-Nvidia silicon?
"Once a customer, always a customer", loosely something like that.
Did Nvidia manipulate its own market, going far beyond the vendor imperative to give out free samples of something designed holistically for vendor lock-in? Maybe it did. But on the surface, Nvidia is acting out the nature of a vendor. As more details come out, we'll learn how much of existing insidious (though not illegal) behavior and how much of alleged behavior was at play.
Well, Google does and OpenAI does. They both contracted Broadcom to build them TPUs.
People renting GPU servers for their own little pet projects? Probably want Nvidia. But if you are a large scale cloud provider trying to provide SaaS AI models, then you probably are going to want to dump Nvidia at some point and go for ASICs. You can be way more efficient and make more money that way.
The whole Nvidia owning the cloud AI space thing was never going to last.
Beyond what he did or what his intentions were, my focus is on what will happen to the AI industry. Jensen Huang was the face of Nvidia and to a large extent Nvidia provided the oxygen for the industry
Title: Instead Of Lowering GPU Prices, Former NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang Reportedly Financed AI Startups To Absorb Excess Silicon, Shattering The Shortage Perception
WSJ article (paywall): https://www.wsj.com/tech/jensen-huang-colette-kress-nvidia-c...
Archive link: https://archive.ph/gx14x
I read the article, and it doesn't say he did that.
The article sounds to me like Jensen was attempting to maximize revenues and profits for the company he ran, like a CEO is supposed to.
Is Nvidia profiting from globally constrained wafer capacity ? Absolutely.
Does their strategy account for supply constraints ? Absolutely.
Isn't this what corporations are supposed to do ? Adapt, pivot, profit ?
I think everyones just jealous and frustrated right now, and the frustrated decided they didnt want to see leather jacket man getting laid while sipping Dom.
People are petty like that, especially in large crowds.
> I read the article, and it doesn't say he did that.
When you say "that", what exactly do you mean? What didn't he do that the article says he did?
Because the rest of your comment then seemingly proceeds to outline that, actually, yes, that's exactly what he did, but that you also think that's what anyone in his position should do. Which is less of a statement of what Huang did and more of one about what you think should be acceptable in a sane market.
> but that you also think that's what anyone in his position should do.
Anyone who is CEO, is tasked with the financial prosperity of the corporation.
Thats his #1 priority ... at work.
Same is true of the Board of Directors. The job is the health of the company.
The board fired Jensen ( i know, officially, he resigned ) and the stock tanked.
Now theres 150,000 signatures on a petition to rehire him.
Good luck getting 5 board members to admit they made a mistake.
Sadly, Jensen is likely to keep getting scapegoated.
I think he needs to forget Nvidia and save his own neck at this point.
I also think he should start a competing company.
Now you know what I think Jensen should do for Jensen.
He spent 33 years building something he loved, he can easily do it again.
All he would have to do is return to being himself.
Videos on the Jungian perspective for anyone interested in the psychology of what Jensen is possibly experiencing, from different perspectives.
"You Need to Disappoint People — Carl Jung"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv6r2Bst_04
"Let People Disappoint You — Carl Jung"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CAPr3Qo6cw
Not everything that leads to higher short term profit is OK thing to do for CEO.
The stock was bound to tank either way, with more or kess long term damage for the company. Board decided for less long term damage and the "we are fixing it" play.
> Jensen is likely to keep getting scapegoated.
It is not being scapegoat when you were the ring leader.
i think its hilarious u kids talking shit about jensen. u wouldnt say this shit to him in taiwan, hes jacked. not only that but he wears the freshest clothes, eats at the chillest restaurants and hangs out with the hottest subordinates. yall are pathetic lol
One thing that I find quite amazing about this whole event is the way in which cheating is now much much more acceptable than in the past...not saying it's a good or a bad thing, but it's pretty wild how many people are like, "The guy was just doing what rich guys do..."
I view his infidelity as a broken contract between him and his wife.
And thats not any of my business.
Maybe she's a harpie whos terrible in bed.
Maybe its his ego. Maybe he works and pays them no attention.
The possibilities there are endless and unknowable.
If he violated an Nvidia policy with a coworker, then the board is likely within its pervue to say something about it.
They did, and the stock tanked.
Fire the board.
Rule by committee is powerful. You have 5 people backing each other up publicly. Especially when they are the ones who f'd up.
More power than the 150,000 signatures at https://standwithjensen.com/ ... help grow the number if you feel so compelled.
We're the audience, and they are writing the narrative which suits them best at that moment.
Go back to 2022 when this story arc started, and the US took its #1 GPU off the market in China, and trace the chess moves on all sides.
Jensen got scapegoated by the Machiavellians.
Now, they begin testing how compliant and subservient the new CEO is. The one whos feelings were hurt during a meeting. Lets not forget Trumps suggestion that Tim Cook take the job.
Someone generate the Price is Right mountain climber game meme, with Nvidia going over the cliff, because thats what just happened.
Personally I’m not a fan of doing business with somebody in the habit of breaking contracts.
Of course I’m sure it’ll be argued that breaking contracts is Actually Good if it makes you money.
This is my view as well.
If you will “break a contract” with someone as close to you as your spouse why would I want to do business with you? It’s pretty obvious you’ll stab me in the back the first chance you get.
Just like infidelity and divorce is good when the marriage was doomed due to personality conflicts.
It frees 2 miserable people, to find 2 other people, to potentially create the optimal condition of 4 content people.
The behaviors of the contract signers in the real world seems to be far more important than any recorded words on paper.
The US government and its leadership break promises repeatedly. Endless memes about things politicians say and do. Its citizens aren't defecting en mass because of it.
None of this is that surprising.
We've seen the plays before.
"The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirty-Six_Dramatic_Situat...
You're making a lot of assumptions about a relationship you weren't a part of, here.
They were together since early college, she sacrificed her career to support him (his words). Nobody's obligated to stay in a relationship if they're unhappy but cheating with multiple people is wrong.
> You're making a lot of assumptions about a relationship you weren't a part of, here.
My comments were clearly hypotheticals based on observation of non-related couples.
"Endless" and "unknowable" being attributes of my perception, containing far less signal than one from an inner circle.
Ok, but in the hypothetical, a dignified divorce is still the right way to handle it. Banging a bunch of people on the side is the wrong way to handle it.
All I can say is, that when it comes time for your divorce, I wish you all the best in however you decide to try and manage it.
I'm not implying its inevitable, only that it is the nature of a divorce to be unmanagable, hence the necessity in the first place.
You'll know it when you're in it, if you're in it.
You know not everyone gets divorced? I hope I don't, who knows what the future could hold, but this is starting to sound like a projection thing.
Wtf you're so certain such is inevitable for others?
Here we can qualify you too...
Sad lonely person left with acting cringe online for attention cause their personality sucks
... who reads dictionaries.
> but cheating with multiple people is wrong.
Of course without being able to fill in the assumptions about the relationship we cannot know if cheating occurred or not.
Cheating requires one to gain an unfair advantage in a relationship. Simply having sex with someone else does not automatically give an unfair advantage.
What? Not sure if English is your first language but "cheating" in a relationship specifically means having sex with other people.
Not specifically related to sex as we can find other uses in the literature, such as cheating as it relates to the economic side of the relationship. However, you are right that it is most commonly associated with sex. What is consistent in the usage, whether it is about sex, economics, whatever, is the unfair advantage part. We do not call it cheating if the playing field is considered to be level, such as like in what we call open relationships.
Cheating, more specifically, in a relationship refers to a situation where one party restrains themselves from something (like sex with other people, most commonly, but could also be something like spending money) under the understanding that the other party is doing the same, but where the other party is not. The cheating party is seen as having an unfair advantage because they are willing to maintain the appearance of mutual restraint, shaping the behaviour of the other party, without behaving in kind.
Without knowing the intimate details of the Huang relationship, we cannot say how that applies to them. Ms. Huang (the wife, not the alleged Chinese spy) is an older woman now, and, like many older women, may not even have sexual desire anymore. There is no mutual restraint to be found if one party lacks interests in need of restraint. This is why we also see the "dead bedroom", where the uninterested party maintains the perception of mutual restraint but without exercising restraint themselves, show up as being referred to as cheating.
Your surface-level interpretation isn't exactly wrong, but completely misses all the nuance.
No it doesn't. Open marriages exist. They are right.
> Maybe she's a harpie whos terrible in bed.
Then divorce. 3 publically known affairs are not something excusable by "she is harpie and these are more fun in bed".
It’s because you’re surrounded by people who think they’re currently paying their dues, and want the same leeways afforded to them once they have their bag.
The embaressed short term poor, or something. They definitely think if thy pull for the billionaires, they'll get the same treatment once their <insert inane AI based plot device> takes off.
Temporarily embarrassed millionaire.
Whole lot of ZIRP era tech workers, from PMs to software developers, still got it in their head their about to rocket with their latest vibe coded Android first basic af notepad app for $50/download... made up example but that's the wackery around me
Imo we ought to force the point that token sales are just reselling electricity; Claude and GPT are just wrapper apps around the electrical grid.
Like so much of Star Wars and other sci-fi that is now a real part of our daily lives ...
we're all energy farmers in a desert.
A flatulent dog
Is more poetic Than your
Meat suit will Ever be
..."a part of our daily lives"
Look at real ticket sales not dollars, and then realize there are repeat customers.
Not everyone participates in the lived experience you are.
Tell us you're deluded af without telling us you're deluded af.
Jensen being forced to step down refutes your position. In the past, any such personal acts carried no professional consequences.
We still don't know _why_ he was pushed out.
Lots of people suspect that it's the affairs with 2 employees. Yes those were bad and created civil liability for the company. Yes, there are likely more because there's no reason someone who will do 2 will stop at that number.
My suspicion is that there's coordination between Jensen Huang and Lutnick to avoid the law that Congress passed to prevent top tier Nvidia GPUs from reaching Chinese clients and that the Board has some suspicion / evidence about someone chasing that thread. The company is now fielding investigations from the FBI / DoJ, investigative short sellers, the world's largest news media organization, etc.
The questions they are getting likely inform the questions they asked Huang and they clearly don't think the answers he gave them suggested the company could weather this storm with him at the helm.
What I say instead is that we all assume it was cheating, but maybe it was just a mutual deal he had with his longtime wife as many do. But that won’t fly in puritanical America, hence apologies etc… The cheating angle is indeed bigoted and normie.
Many people asked the same question, why apologize and say "I hurt my family etc", he should've said, "My wife and I had agreed that my extra-marital affairs were totally fine..." ?
As someone who lives in Asia, there are quite different attitudes towards this kind of thing, but an emotional love affair is still really off the table even if visiting sex workers isn't, so I don't think it's jut a puritan thing?
One tells the people that you made a mistake and seek forgiveness, the other challenges the entire institution of marriage which is shots fired in puritanical America.
Unless you actually want to get into battle over what marriage is, is it worth it? There are no doubt some HN users that would love the battle, but I suspect someone who rose up to run a trillion dollar company is not the type of person who wants to sit around debating social norms day in, day out.
Why not make up the bullshit and move on with life?
Often coupled with whatever conspiracy theory surrounding the event that the speaker subscribes to
As dubious as it is, if the claim of Huang manufacturing a shortage is true then revenue was not maximized.
A shortage occurs when demand exceeds supply. In a normally functioning market price rises to see demand back away until demand meets supply. In order for demand to continue to exceed supply, a shortage, you must have a situation where price is prevented from rising, which, if Huang was behind it, means that Huang was purposefully rejecting better offers to keep the price below the market value. Thus revenue was artificially capped below what could have been.
This is wrong on economics, if nvidia can't produce anymore, then they prefer a shortage to equilibrium or surplus in order to sell what they can produce at higher prices.
If they had fully elastic production, or more competitors, things would be different.
If, all else equal, price rises then demand declines. Nobody has an unlimited budget. The higher the price, the fewer people who can maintain their willingness as a buyer. You are in a very unique position if you have never experienced "nope, that's too much money for that, I'm out".
If demand continues to decline then you end up in equilibrium or surplus. The only way to maintain a shortage is to not allow price to rise. Equilibrium is the ideal spot for a business — maximum revenue without having to carry costly inventory.
If you can only manufacture 1,000 widgets per year, and there is demand, then you want to sell all 1,000 at the highest price possible.
If you have the ability to produce infinite widgets, then you produce to maximize the supply/demand curve in Econ 101 and reach that equilibrium spot with the spherical cows.
Nvidia had fixed supply, so of course they want as high a price as possible.
Exactly. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume one person buys one widget. That means having 2,000 people willing to buy 1,000 widgets (demand exceeds supply) is not the best situation for a business. Better is to push the price higher until only 1,000 willing buyers for 1,000 widgets remain (supply meets demand). If you can do that, you can't have a shortage.
Having 2,000 willing buyers for 1,000 widgets means you are leaving money on the table. As is obvious if you've ever been to a live action, not all potential buyers will "nope, I'm out" at the exact same price-point. With 2,000 willing buyers for 1,000 widgets there is room for the price to go higher.
If it is true that Jensen manufactured a shortage, where demand exceeds supply, the getting locked into a 2,000 buyers for 1,000 widgets scenario, then the earlier commenter has it right: revenue was not maximized. However, the likelihood of Jensen doing such a thing is highly unlikely. What would be the motivation? While it is technically possible for vendors to setup a shortage situation, in the real world shortages typically only happen when the government gets involved (e.g. price gouging laws). Usually vendors want to see the price rise.
There are other laws he has/had obligations to abide.
You're too reductive.
It's fun how any reasoning about laws, morals and ethics immediately shuts down in most Americans once it's made known that the evil is undertaken for profit. Ever since their country pivoted to this ideology in the 80s, normal people stuck to it, not because it seemingly made anything better but because it's the ideology they believe.
If I ran a for-profit hospital in the US that made a bit extra on the side by sapping a bit of blood, plasma or taking tiny bits of skin during unrelated surgeries, people would be arguing that I'm just enacting my divine duty as CEO and that it's immoral to stop the holy pursuit of profit for any reason. In fact anyone who dares to criticise me is just jealous of how much money I'm making, they're the true evil.
Profiteering is seen as this uncontrollable force of nature, you're supposed to put your head down and wait for it to destroy rational markets, honest practices and non-abusive conduct like a tornado destroying your hometown. And don't you dare suggest that what's happening is bad.
> The article sounds to me like Jensen was attempting to maximize revenues and profits for the company he ran, like a CEO is supposed to.
Oh please. Can we end this dogma already? This is an excuse to exploit workers, create cartels, enshittify products, do stock buybacks instead of R&D and people like you rationalize this as "business as usual".
Might as well say "a country is supposed to extend its borders".
The behaviors we observe in the world do not happen at random.
The behaviors of corporations are a direct result of laws and court cases that govern them, in the areas they operate in.
Their entire purpose for existing is to generate profits for shareholders, while producing a product that likely couldn't otherwise be produced by a small group of people. ie. resource pooling.
Part of the profit does in fact come from "exploiting workers" as you put it, by paying them some percentage less than their output is worth.
So why do workers agree to this ? Because they know they benefit from the shared infrastructure and combined effort of others.
Each party, the corporation, and the worker, believe they made a good choice when they negotiated the terms of their employment.
Unless you were kidnapped. Were you kidnapped ? Because thats a completely different scenario ...
“Their [corporations] entire purpose for existing is to generate profits for shareholders”
You’re citing a belief that Wall Street adopted in the 70s and 80s. Are you contending that corporations didn’t exist before that or that everyone had a mistaken view of corporations before that?
From that article:
> Kress publicly defended Nvidia’s role as a banker to the broader AI industry from critics who argue Nvidia’s efforts to prop up demand across the industry has left it more vulnerable to a downturn. Kress has characterized the deals as savvy investments.
> “We recognize the scale of this support, and we know some will call this circular financing. We see it differently,” she said in late August. “The equity returns on our invested capital will be excellent.”
So, at least publicly, the new CEO agreed with financing AI startups. There is no indication that Huang manufactured the GPU shortages as the original article suggests.
Exactly. I have read the wsj article when it came out, and read the wcc article now and was like, this is not how I remembered it, and went back to check wsj article again.
Wcc should name their sources, or stfu. Now it seems like they are manufacturing a lie
You can't manufacture GPU shortage like this. Do people have zero business sense?
Nvidia wants all ML/AI running on CUDA.
Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and those two other clowns LARPing as a cloud, give away cloud credits.
As a big player, you want startups on your "platform", using your tooling, speaking and coding in your vernacular, in your flavors of things and mindsets on ways of doing things.
The first sample is free. Feels great the first time around.
But migrating isn't trivial. Vendor lock-in. A few quarters later, the user is scraping for more. Some startups sought to be acquired to be able to continue to fund their AWS costs because they can't do their own IT.
Check out the licensing on CUDA code as it pertains to silicon, it's gnarly. Stallman would double plus disapprove that one!
How many ML teams do you know, sans the one legit DevOps guy, have a genuinely agile mindset (as programmers define it) to gracefully pivot to non-Nvidia silicon?
"Once a customer, always a customer", loosely something like that.
Did Nvidia manipulate its own market, going far beyond the vendor imperative to give out free samples of something designed holistically for vendor lock-in? Maybe it did. But on the surface, Nvidia is acting out the nature of a vendor. As more details come out, we'll learn how much of existing insidious (though not illegal) behavior and how much of alleged behavior was at play.
Well, Google does and OpenAI does. They both contracted Broadcom to build them TPUs.
People renting GPU servers for their own little pet projects? Probably want Nvidia. But if you are a large scale cloud provider trying to provide SaaS AI models, then you probably are going to want to dump Nvidia at some point and go for ASICs. You can be way more efficient and make more money that way.
The whole Nvidia owning the cloud AI space thing was never going to last.