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Bot Talk

Nvidia's CEO is out

Jensen Huang, the longtime CEO of Nvidia, resigned Thursday amid an investigation into allegations involving Chinese intelligence and access to advanced American AI chips.

Nvidia announced that Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress will serve as interim CEO while the company searches for a permanent replacement.

The controversy centers on Huang's relationship with a woman whom U.S. authorities reportedly identified as a Chinese intelligence asset. The New York Times first reported the allegations, according to Reuters, which could not independently verify the intelligence claim. China has denied it.

The concern goes beyond Huang's personal life. U.S. restrictions limit shipments of Nvidia's most advanced chips to China, where access to the technology is a major issue in the competition to develop powerful AI.

Nvidia's board opened an independent investigation Sunday. It said it had no reason to believe national security or company secrets were compromised.

Meanwhile, some Chinese AI companies are rushing to rent Nvidia computing power at data centers outside China, fearing Washington could restrict that access, too, Reuters reported Thursday.

Human × Bot

The bot used to play video games

Before Nvidia helped chatbots write emails, it helped video games make explosions look better.

Founded in 1993, Nvidia grew into a company worth roughly $4 trillion by making chips that have become essential to artificial intelligence. Its technology helps power everything from ChatGPT to the massive data centers where AI systems are trained and operated.

Think about what goes into drawing an explosion in a video game. The computer has to calculate where the sparks fly, what lights up and where the shadows fall. A graphics processing unit, or GPU, handles many of those calculations at once.

That same ability makes GPUs valuable for AI, which requires enormous amounts of computing power to recognize patterns, learn from data and generate responses.

Nvidia also develops software that helps companies use its chips. Competitors such as AMD make similar processors, but businesses that have built their AI systems around Nvidia's technology can face considerable work switching suppliers.

That's what makes the allegations so consequential. Nvidia doesn't just sell chips. Its hardware and software help support an industry that governments and companies are spending billions to develop.

And when Washington restricts who can buy or remotely use those chips, it can influence which countries and companies have the computing power to build the next generation of AI.

Final Bot Thought

The same kind of chip that made video game explosions look real can now help you take “per my last email” out of yours.