From Gaming to $5 Trillion — Nvidia’s Journey  ## Metadata - Author: [[Hard Fork AI]] - Full Title: From Gaming to $5 Trillion — Nvidia’s Journey - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/c6e2de6d-2493-46e7-9840-c88af316663a ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **GPUs Fueled Nvidia's Meteoric Rise** - Nvidia's market value exploded as GPUs became essential for AI training and inference. - The stock rose 1500% over five years, driven by genuine hardware demand, not just hype. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer NVIDIA has just become the first public company in the world to be worth $5 trillion thanks to the sale of its GPU chips largely being used for AI. There is a ton of drama coming up with OpenAI, including US President Donald Trump expected to meet with President Xi Jinping on Thursday, talking about selling NVIDIA chips specifically As China has banned them and there's a whole bunch of stuff going down in this space. NVIDIA is on an absolute tear. Is this a bubble? Is it going to pop? How did we get to this place? We're going to be talking about all of this on the podcast today. Before we do, I wanted to mention if you've ever wanted to try all of the different AI models that I talk about on the show, I'd love for you to check out my platform. It's called AIbox.ai. We built a playground that essentially allows you to use all of the top AI models. There's over 40 on there. So you can get things like all the opening eye and tropic, uh, you know, cohair, deep seek, Google Gemini, all of that on there, but you can also get a bunch of really cool image models. Uh, you can get things like black forest labs, ideogram, and of course, opening eyes, image generation. And then if you do stuff with audio, we have 11 labs built in as well. So instead of having subscriptions to all of these different platforms for 20 bucks a month, you get access to everything all in one place. You can compare results side by side to test what model gives you the best response for different things, what image generation model might take your prompt to make the best image. And you don't have to get a subscription to 11 labs open ai or everything else all combined so it's all on there go check it out it is aivox.ai i'll leave a link in the description all right Let's get into what's going on with nvidia so the thing that i mentioned at the beginning is that um their shares are up more than five percent today um and that's to over two hundred and Twelve dollars i mean if you look at Nvidia's run over the last five years, it's on an absolutely insane run. It's up over 1500% in the last five years. ([Time 0:00:01](https://share.snipd.com/snip/03151fc3-f025-4c33-b52d-9c836979de8c)) - **Personal Trade On Nvidia Dip** - Jaeden describes buying Nvidia stock after a 2024 dip and doubling his position since April. - He contrasts that with missing out on earlier 2022 prices and reflects on timing luck. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer It's at over $200. A lot of people said back in January. So at the beginning of this year, it was at like $142. It crashed all the way down to $94. And the sentiment on Twitter, if I'm being a hundred percent honest for all the influencers I followed at the time was like, wow, they're giving away free money. Nvidia shares crashed, go buy it. And everyone purchased it, myself included. I wish, of course, I had purchased it in 2022, but I did get some in April of this year. So that was great. And since then, since April, we've went from $94 to $207. So anyone jumping in at that moment would have doubled their money since April, which is fantastic. ([Time 0:02:03](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d23ea16b-4fdd-4826-857f-336c9ae2b1d1)) - **From Chips To Supercomputers** - Nvidia is expanding beyond chips into full data centers and supercomputers for government and industry. - Those projects create sustained, large-scale GPU demand across sectors like security, energy, and science. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer All of this is because, um, today or on, you know, uh, on Thursday, uh, Donald Trump is going to be meeting with Xi Jinping and they're going to, they're expected among obviously many Other things to discuss the, um, to discuss all of the new chips that NVIDIA is rolling out specifically their Blackwell chips. So with all of that, investors obviously got really excited. In addition, there was a comment made by the CEO of NVIDIA, Jensen Huang, who said that the company expects $500 billion in AI chip sales and that it's building seven new supercomputers For the US in areas like security, energy, and science. So, you know, they kind of put this out on their newsroom, but they're highlighting what they're planning on building. You know, US government labs and the nation's leading companies are all kind of getting together and investing in advanced AI infrastructure to power AI factories and accelerate US AI development. With that, you just see them like making these big announcements. I'm not just chips, but like the full data centers that are going to have to be filled with chips. And you just see, this is not slowing down. In addition, there was a big high profile, um, AI robot company that just came out today with a new company that kind of did their launch. Um, and you start to think all of these robots walking around are going to use an incredible amount of training power to make really powerful humanoid robots. NVIDIA is just going to keep winning in this space. Specifically, all the projects that they're doing to build all these new supercomputers are going to require thousands of NVIDIA GPUs. On Tuesday, they said that they had invested $1 billion. So this is kind of a new area. ([Time 0:02:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5959d87c-19d4-4782-af7a-bc6233550f60)) - **Telecom And Edge Are New GPU Frontiers** - Nvidia is moving into telecom and edge use-cases by partnering with companies like Nokia for AI-native 5G/6G networks. - That widens GPU applications to infrastructure beyond traditional datacenters. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer On Tuesday, they said that they had invested $1 billion. So this is kind of a new area. So it just feels like NVIDIA, everyone's like, oh, it's a bubble. They're going to max out how much they can sell to open AI and Google, right? They just keep adding new things. So they just announced that they invested a billion dollars into Nokia to accelerate an AI ran transition from 5G to 6G. And so it just feels like they're adding new areas. There's all of the data centers that they seem to be spearheading big investments into. There seems to be partnerships with, you know, telecom now, right? And, and these kinds of areas where they're going to start using AI to, and NVIDIA is going to be helping to power like cell service and other, other main infrastructure projects. So this is going to be really interesting. They said specifically, quote, to enable communication service providers to launch AI native 5G advanced and 6G networks on NVIDIA's platforms. What does it even mean to have 5G and 6G running on NVIDIA's platforms? I don't know 100%, but evidently they're building tools that will use their chips to run that. They've identified like a big new technological move. I think at some point, once the company is worth $5 billion or $5 trillion, they could just start saying, well, look at all these other big industries. Let's just go create products that service those industries. We have kind of this really high powered chip edge, and we're going to apply it into those industries. And they're able to just start gobbling up more and more market share. And they have so much money that they can basically fund any infrastructure projects that they want. So all of this is coming just three months after NVIDIA became ([Time 0:04:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/70549c2f-a0f4-4496-81ce-f6be59525979)) - **Plan For Persistent GPU Scarcity** - Expect Nvidia-driven GPU scarcity to keep pricing power high for the near term. - Treat GPU access as a critical strategic constraint when planning AI projects and budgets. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer And the growth rate is absolutely incredible on this. Three months later, we are now at $5 billion. So their stock has surged more than 50% so far just this year. Most of this is going because of their GPUs, and everyone has basically this insatiable appetite to purchase GPUs. They're going to be using all of the data centers for training all of the LLMs, inference, and a lot more. And they're really valuable. Why? Like why can NVIDIA sell them for so much money? Because they're scarce. And essentially by trading them directly into an ever-inflating data center scheme, NVIDIA is making sure that they always are scarce. They're always hard to get. And you get comments from people like Sam Altman on this saying like, you know, he can hardly get his hands on enough GPUs from them. And so it just feels like there's an insatiable demand from these AI companies who feel like the more GPUs they have, the better their AI models get. So it's really a race that all of them are doing as well. So more generally, of course, you could say that tech stocks are way up this year on optimism that AI is making this big revolution. But I think NVIDIA is just one of those companies that continues to win. And it's not just because of the hype. NVIDIA legitimately is selling insane amounts of chips. So with all of that said, over the last year, investors have been encouraged by these ([Time 0:06:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a5ad8cb6-65eb-4495-8295-3e0db9b49098)) - **Deals Amplify Nvidia's Demand Loop** - Nvidia's financing and partnership moves (e.g., investing in OpenAI) deepen commercial ties and increase chip consumption. - Critics call it round-tripping, but it effectively secures demand and growth for Nvidia products. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer A lot of them have NVIDIA at the center. A lot of people have criticized NVIDIA as being a bubble because NVIDIA will do all sorts of interesting things. For example, in September, they said that they were going to invest $100 billion into OpenAI. What does OpenAI go and do after they get $100 billion from NVIDIA? They're going to go spend that $100 billion to go buy more chips from NVIDIA. So some people say that they're cooking the books or they're round tripping and they give you money and then you give it right back to them. So what's the difference? They're doing a bunch of interesting things where NVIDIA is actually getting equity in open AI, right? So they are giving them this a hundred billion dollars, taking equity in the company and then making them the chips. And because their company keeps growing, they're able to get, you know, investment money on the open market. And then they were able to use that and pour it in. And like, that's the money that they spend at the end of the day. I think the big debate is like, are they just, is it kind of like this big bubble where they're all just patting each other's backs? And that's why the stock price keeps going up. And I know you can make an argument for that, but I also would make the argument that there is a really a true demand from opening eye on a lot of these companies and whether they can finance It or not, they want more chips. There is a real demand. They've seen that the more chips they have, the better their models get. ([Time 0:07:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e41d8d94-90b5-421c-9402-621356fd0b8e)) - **Gigawatt-Scale Deployments Signal Long-Term Demand** - Nvidia and OpenAI intend to deploy gigawatts of systems to scale AI operations. - That level of deployment signals massive ongoing infrastructure spending and GPU consumption. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer Everyone wants to win the AI race. OpenAI has 800 million weekly active users, an absolutely staggering number, And getting close to a billion weekly active users from OpenAI just means that there is an insane amount Of obvious demand. And they're just going to try to do everything they can. So with all of that, OpenAI and NVIDIA have both said that they intend to deploy 10 gigawatts worth of NVIDIA systems to power OpenAI systems. ([Time 0:09:19](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bb74622a-e7b8-4e18-81c6-62290a9f55be)) - **Valuation Surpasses Most Countries** - Nvidia's $5 trillion valuation exceeds the market caps of nearly every country and most public companies. - That underscores how concentrated value has become around AI infrastructure suppliers. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer It's worth more. Get this. This is just absolutely crazy to me. Nvidia is worth more than the aggregated market caps of all countries. If you exclude, if you exclude the United States, China, and Japan, NVIDIA is worth more than all other countries. So India has a $4.5 trillion market cap. India has been beaten by NVIDIA. The UK, $4.1 trillion. Canada, $3.6 trillion. France, $3.3 trillion. Germany, $2.9 trillion. Taiwan, $2.6 trillion. Switzerland, $2.6 trillion. Saudi Arabia 2.5 trillion. You get to go down the list, but basically Nvidia is worth more than every other company other than United States, China, and Japan. And I'll give you like a little bit of a perspective on that. United States is worth 70 trillion. China is worth 11 trillion dollars, but come on. I mean, this is, this is like, um, you know, all the, companies inside of those countries. But come on. NVIDIA is worth 50% of all of the companies in China that are publicly traded. Like, what? That is absolute insanity. Or it's basically worth every company in Japan, publicly traded company in Japan. NVIDIA is worth that. I mean, even the $70 trillion in the United States, 5 trillion of that being in one company is just absolutely crazy. So these numbers are getting bigger and bigger. ([Time 0:09:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/dd055511-6510-42e3-9fcd-d3590b6e8c87)) - **Treat The Bubble As Productive Capital** - Accept that AI exuberance may form a bubble but still yields lasting technological progress. - Use investment cycles to build infrastructure and tools that survive the eventual correction. Transcript: Jaeden Schafer It's good. And if you think the bubble is going to pop here, personally, I really just don't see it with, we're on the verge of humanoid robots. We're on the verge of so many of these data centers being built out. I feel like NVIDIA has more room to grow. Of course, this is not financial advice, but I've just seen a lot of people saying that NVIDIA was in a bubble a year ago and two years ago. At some point, will the bubble pop? Yeah, probably. At some point, the bubble will pop. And I think that is a good thing to remember. Now, if you talk to someone like Jeff Bezos, he says, yes, we're in bubble, but it's a good thing. And he compares it to in the 2000s when tons of healthcare companies came out and there's like kind of this healthcare bubble, eventually it popped. But from that, all the money that had been dumped into there, we got a bunch of really good drugs out of it. He compares it to that. So the bubble is going to pop, but we're going to get all this amazing AI technology out of it. So we're going see where all of this goes. ([Time 0:11:16](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7d87d284-40d5-4089-9ecb-ff201dc2ae11))