Nvidia's Jensen Huang confirms he was once asked to become chief executive of TSMC: 'I declined it... it's an unbelievable offer, but I simply couldn't take it'
Given Nvidia's status as the world's most valuable company, and the firm sitting at the forefront of the AI boom, I doubt CEO Jensen Huang has many regrets. Still, in a recent appearance on the Lex Fridman podcast, Huang confirmed that his future could have looked very different if he'd accepted a position as the chief executive of chipmaking juggernaut TSMC.
The company's founder, Morris Chang, wrote in his autobiography that Huang was offered the top position at the firm in 2013, but declined. When asked to confirm the story, Huang said:
"The story is true. I didn't dismiss it, but I was deeply honoured. And of course, I knew then, as I know now [that] TSMC is one of the most consequential companies in history.
"Morris is one of the highest regarded executives and business and personal friends that I've had in my life, and for him to ask is... I was humbled and really honoured", Huang continued.
"But the work that I'm doing here is really important, and I've seen, you know, in my mind's eye, what Nvidia was going to be and the impact that we could have. And it was really important work, and it's my responsibility, you know, my sole responsibility to make this happen."
"And so I declined it", Huang concludes. "Not because it wasn't an incredible offer. It's an unbelievable offer, but I simply couldn't take it."
Despite having declined the position (and publicly giving TSMC the hurry up in recent months), Huang's admiration for the chipmaking titan is clear to see.
"The deepest misunderstanding about TSMC is that their technology is all they have, that somehow they have a really great transistor, and if somebody shows up [with] another transistor, game over", said Huang.
"Their technology makes the company special, but their ability to orchestrate the dynamic demands of hundreds of companies in the world as they're moving up, shifting out... increasing, decreasing, pushing out, pulling in, changing from customer to customer. Wafer starting, wafer stopping, emergency wafer starts.
"So their system, their manufacturing system, is completely miraculous, I would say", Huang continued. "Then the second thing is their culture. This culture is a simultaneously technology focused, on one hand, advancing technology [while being] simultaneously customer service oriented on the other hand.
"A lot of companies are very customer service oriented, but they're not very technology excellent. They're not at the bleeding edge of technology.
"Somehow they've balanced these two, and they're world-class at both. And then probably the third thing is the technology that I most value in them, that they created. This intangible called trust. I trust them to put my company on top of them. That's a very big deal."
So, while Huang opted to stay and captain the good ship Nvidia towards extremely lucrative shores, it seems his admiration for TSMC is undiminished. And while both companies are raking in the profits as the AI boom continues to explode, it seems the relationship between the two has never been stronger.
"I don't know how many tens, hundreds of billions of dollars of business we've done through them, and we don't have a contract", Huang concludes. Quite the handshake deal, isn't it?