Building https://teapawt.net/t.co/kGFDilliJZ, ex @NVIDIA
Joined May 2014
- Tweets420
- Following1.6K
- Followers946
- Likes1.5K
Pinned Tweet
Almost 16 years ago @JensenHuang looked me right in the eyes, paused, super intense, and said "I would do anything for this company."
I'd started my career at @nvidia working directly with him, managing the demos at all of his keynotes, customer meetings, investor events and tradeshows like NVISION and GTC.
I was on a trip with Jensen flying from San Jose to Phoenix and NVIDIA's travel policy was that all employees flew coach... which I was fine with but I assumed the founder of the company would be flying in biz.
I board the plane in group six and as I'm boarding I start to get worried because I don't see Jensen in any of the first class seats on this flight... I wonder if he missed it, if we are still going etc.. and as I walk to my seat in the back of the plane, somewhere around row 14 I see Jensen in a middle seat in coach, working on his blackberry.
We were going to Phoenix for a small Consumer Electronics Association meeting (goal was to present here so that Jensen could get an invite from CEA to keynote CES the next year.. it ended up being two years later). It was super clear that the sparsely populated room had no idea who Jensen was either and the response to the presentation was tepid at best..
Afterwards at the airport on the way back to San Jose he ordered me my first ever martini (which was the strongest drink I've ever had in my life up to that point) and I mustered up the courage to asked him why we went all this way to demo some tech to a few random CEA members .... and that's when he looked at me and said that he'd do anything for this company.
I was blown away. This is the CEO, flying in coach (on the flight back he had an aisle seat) pitching a room of people that barely cared, and he's dead serious.. he really would do anything and sacrifice anything to make NVIDIA successful.
I can't really imagine NVIDIA without him. But the people who've lasted there that long are winners and the culture is literally one of a kind.. they'll get through this.
I hope him stepping down is only temporary.
I have so many more stories and lessons Jensen taught me and that I witnessed being around him. Will share more later.. some of the best are around GTC / NVISION
Most people don't know that @JensenHuang was responsible for bringing AAA @RockstarGames titles like GTA 3 to mobile devices (on both iOS and Android) - and here's how it happened
After a few years as his technical assistant I moved into developer relations on the new mobile business unit of the company called Tegra. We were getting ready to launch Tegra 3 and @renehaas237 (now the CEO of @Arm) was in charge of the chip. Jensen wanted a AAA showcase game to announce the chip.. which was promising console-quality games on a phone, and something the industry at that point thought was impossible.
I get an email from Jensen with just the headline "Get us GTA".
So.. I instantly panic. I went from being his demo guy to being the guy that has to create a showcase demo with the game industry's most valuable IP for a fledgling business unit that NVIDIA is putting massive resources behind (and that had an install base of almost nothing).
And this is where the genius of Jensen really shines. He structured NVIDIA to have more software engineers than hardware engineers, not only for NVIDIA's own software stack but with a massive amount of developer technology resources that would help third party developers push the frontiers of their own software with NVIDIA hardware.. and our devtech team not only knew that it technically could be done but they could help make it happen.
I flew to NYC to meet with Rockstar and to show them the new prototype Tegra 3 hardware with an internal graphics tech demo running on it and pitched them having us be part of our launch by showcasing GTA 3 running on Tegra 3.
Rockstar were surprised by the graphics capabilities and intrigued when we told them about Jensen's vision of having their entire catalog running on mobile devices and how it could open up a huge new market for their IP.
Ultimately Rockstar committed to working with us on a few conditions - we'd first do a test port of the original Max Payne on mobile, that NVIDIA would pay for it, and that they would have final control and say over the whole thing. We went back to Jensen, gave him the news, asked him for budget, and then we went to go and find a development team that could work jointly with our devtech team and Rockstar's producers for this to happen - fully funded by NVIDIA with Jensen's approval.
What happens next is history, the release of Max Payne was a success and paved the way for GTA 3, Vice City, and most of the AAA back catalog of Rockstar Games coming to mobile making Rockstar hundreds of millions of dollars. The original development team we found for the initial port ended up getting acquired by Rockstar and NVIDIA later had GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas as showcase titles for future mobile products.
@JensenHuang 's legacy will be one of big, bold, calculated bets that are win / win for the industry and ecosystem. He did this back in the early days of gaming and 3D graphics and has done this to a huge level with open source AI and CUDA.
Him stepping down from NVIDIA is something I could have never imagined and I'm hoping there can be a path for him to return and continue driving and making the big bold bets that benefit the entire industry and ecosystem we are in.
Will be very cool when your ai characters can live in worlds like this, remember you, talk with you and you 👀
Had early access to Genie 4 from @GoogleDeepMind.
This is a fully generated, interactive world from a single starting prompt (environment + character) 🤯
Feels like a massive step forward - you can now prompt to change the world and interact with it. With native audio!
6
1,321
Well said Palmer
I hate qualifying arguments like this, but - everyone knows I am about as pro-Ukraine/anti-Russian as it gets. That regularly leads to friction between me and other Republicans, even ones who otherwise align 99%.
With that said, whining from Europeans and the American left about America buying $1B in diesel fuel from Russia is so out of touch with reality. The EU has spent over $200B on Russian fuel and is on-track to buy hundreds of billions more. Most of that was purchased by wealthy EU members who can absolutely afford alternatives.
teapawt.net/PalmerLuckey/status/20…
2
890
@ammaar for the win
I used Gemini 4 Argon to make Subway Surfers for the new flying Tesla Roadster 🚀
Fly over moving traffic, hit the thrusters to barrel roll in the sky, and collect air power-ups to set a high score.
Play + code below!
1
5
312
Great to see @reactorworld pushing state of the art to real time with H3
2
263
Good thing we are launching character.app soon
🚨 BREAKING: Character.AI, once valued at $1 billion, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, just 10 days after its former CEO became Disney's CTO.
Just two years ago, Google paid $2.7 billion in a licensing and talent deal.
Disney, which sent Character.AI a cease-and-desist last year, is now bidding $20 million for certain IP rights and claims.
Character.AI warns its chatbot platform could shut down unless a buyer agrees to keep it running.
1
222
great launch video
the time has come to reinvent talking from first principles.
@MachineGodsPod x @NPR, starting the week of 10/19, on youtube or wherever you get your podcasts.
2
128
Wow I've turned into a big Ben Affleck fan recently
Ben Affleck says he spent 3 years at home playing StarCraft after becoming famous
“There was a game called StarCraft that probably took the most life out of me for a period of time. I had just got famous and all I did was stay home for three years and play StarCraft”
“I love Valorant. It's a great game. The problem with that game is that with kids that have been raised playing, I just get f**king rocked. I'm like, ‘Are you f**king cheating?’ And I get mad. It's very humiliating”
“I love 2K. I love Madden. And the early Doom, when I first played that game, which then gave rise to Quake. We played that endlessly for hours when we were doing Good Will Hunting. I remember writing and taking these long breaks to play Doom”
4
172
Vibe coded starcraft is here
I built a working StarCraft level with Sonnet 5.5.
You play Terran, defending your base against the Zerg:
→ Build Marines, Siege Tanks, and Battlecruisers
→ Use SC2 models from Sketchfab (by Catholomew)
→ Music generated with Suno
📌 Play it here: terran-defense-alpha.vercel.…
Sonnet also made the sizzle reel below. Check out my latest tutorial on Sonnet here: youtu.be/MLnsMIbibZY
1
126
Tibo as always making the right choices when it comes to managing the dev community
o yes… we’re back in action and we’ll reset usage limits for all paid users across codex and ChatGPT work
sorry about the brief disruption!
(and yes we have a special spare codex when things are down to help us out)
85
@fal is becoming the default infra layer for genAI media and hosting one of the best events in the space. @venturetwins talking AI video with Grok Imagine and World Labs
9
326
