The titan of AI chips Nvidia momentarily surpassed Microsoft to take the top spot in the world’s richest list last month, surpassing Apple in the process.
At an IT industry event I attended in Copenhagen, the audience spontaneously applauded when this news was revealed on stage.
As I write, Nvidia has returned to second position following a decline in its share price, which reduced the company’s total value to $3 trillion (£2.4 trillion) from Microsoft’s $3.4 trillion.
AI and foresight are the two factors that have driven these two US tech titans to such an astounding peak.
In 2019, Microsoft began funding OpenAI, the company behind the well-known AI chatbot ChatGPT. Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, has long pushed his company to develop AI chips.
Both businesses placed long-term bets on the current AI boom, and thus far, their investments have paid off, leaving previous industry leader Apple in their wake. But for what length of time?
London Tech Week, a yearly occasion for the tech community in the UK, could have been better named London AI Week this year. AI was written in bold letters on every podium and mentioned in every speech.
I ran into Anne Boden, a major disruptor in the fintech space and the creator of Starling Bank. She was giddy with anticipation.
She told me, “We thought we knew who the winners and losers were [in tech].” “But we are rolling the dice again with AI.”
