How Nvidia Built a Competitive Moat Around A.I. Chips – The New York Times
Artificial Intelligence
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The most visible winner of the artificial intelligence boom achieved its dominance by becoming a one-stop shop for A.I. development, from chips to software to other services.
Reporting from San Francisco
Naveen Rao, a neuroscientist turned tech entrepreneur, once tried to compete with Nvidia, the world’s leading maker of chips tailored for artificial intelligence.
At a start-up that the semiconductor giant Intel later bought, Mr. Rao worked on chips intended to replace Nvidia’s graphics processing units, which are components adapted for A.I. tasks like machine learning. But while Intel moved slowly, Nvidia swiftly upgraded its products with new A.I. features that countered what he was developing, Mr. Rao said.
After leaving Intel and leading a software start-up, MosaicML, Mr. Rao used Nvidia’s chips and evaluated them against those from rivals. He found that Nvidia had differentiated itself beyond the chips by creating a large community of A.I. programmers who consistently invent using the company’s technology.
“Everybody builds on Nvidia first,” Mr. Rao said. “If you come out with a new piece of hardware, you’re racing to catch up.”
Over more than 10 years, Nvidia has built a nearly impregnable lead in producing chips that can perform complex A.I. tasks like image, facial and speech recognition, as well as generating text for chatbots like ChatGPT. The onetime industry upstart achieved that dominance by recognizing the A.I. trend early, tailoring its chips to those tasks and then developing key pieces of software that aid in A.I. development.
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