I came to like Jensen Huang's character, and bet everything on him, Shoichiro Irimajiri said in an interview. Shoichiro Irimajiri, former president of what is now Sega Co., said in a recent interview that he had decided to invest $5 million in then-fledgling U.S. chipmaker Nvidia in the late 1990s because he was impressed by the character of its CEO, Jensen Huang. Irimajiri, 86, was head of then-Sega Enterprises when he persuaded the company's top executives to rescue the struggling Nvidia, which has since become one of the world's biggest companies. "I came to like Jensen Huang's character, and bet everything on him," Irimajiri said in the interview. Sega contracted Nvidia to develop a graphics processing unit for the Dreamcast game console it was developing to compete with the PlayStation console released by then Sony Computer Entertainment.

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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says AI will transform the workforce like the Industrial Revolution, creating new jobs even as it reshapes how Americans work.

He has said privately the deal was'non-binding'. He has said privately the deal was'non-binding'. What does the disappearance of a $100bn deal mean for the AI economy? Apparent collapse of Nvidia-OpenAI tie-up raises questions about circular funding and who will bear the cost of AI's expansion Did the circular AI economy just wobble? Last week it was reported that a much-discussed $100bn deal - announced last September - between Nvidia and OpenAI might not be happening at all.

Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia, talks about partnering with Mercedes Benz during the Nvidia Live event at CES 2026 in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Monday. Jensen Huang took the stage at the CES trade show in Las Vegas this week to make the clearest pitch yet for Nvidia's autonomous driving technology. In doing so, the chief executive officer's vision for vehicles that can drive themselves edged into the terrain of major customers like Tesla and its boss, Elon Musk. Huang's remarks sparked a widely watched -- if notably polite -- indirect multiday exchange between two of the most influential figures in technology. It also sharpened a central question about autonomous driving: Who controls the technology that will first power consumer cars that drive themselves -- and later, driverless cars known as robotaxis that are designed for ride-hailing?

Nvidia's chief executive, Jensen Huang, has been on an energetic world tour as the company's share price has soared. Nvidia's chief executive, Jensen Huang, has been on an energetic world tour as the company's share price has soared. Nvidia insists it isn't Enron, but its AI deals are testing investor faith The chipmaker's sprawling partnerships are driving extraordinary growth but also bank its future on the AI boom paying off quickly N vidia is, in crucial ways, nothing like Enron - the Houston energy giant that imploded through multibillion-dollar accounting fraud in 2001. Nor is it similar to companies such as Lucent or Worldcom that folded during the dotcom bubble. But the fact that it needs to reiterate this to its investors is less than ideal. Now worth more than $4tn (£3tn), Nvidia makes the specialised technology that powers the world's AI surge: silicon chips and software packages that train and host systems such as ChatGPT.

W hen the billionaire chief executive of AI chipmaker Nvidia threw a party in central London for Donald Trump's state visit in September, the power imbalance between Silicon Valley and British politicians was vividly exposed. Jensen Huang hastened to the stage after meetings at Chequers and rallied his hundreds of guests to cheer on the power of AI. In front of a huge Nvidia logo, he urged the venture capitalists before him to herald "a new industrial revolution", announced billions of pounds in AI investments and, like Willy Wonka handing out golden tickets, singled out some lucky recipients in the room. "If you want to get rich, this is where you want to be," he declared. But his biggest party trick was a surprise guest waiting in the wings.

Before Monday's announcement, the US had prohibited sales of Nvidia's most advanced chips to China over national security concerns. Trump posted to Truth Social on Monday: "I have informed President Xi, of China, that the United States will allow NVIDIA to ship its H200 products to approved customers in China, and other Countries, under conditions that allow for continued strong National Security. Trump said the Department of Commerce was finalising the details and that he was planning to make the same offer to other chip companies, including Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Intel. Nvidia's H200 chips are the company's second most powerful, and far more advanced than the H20, which was originally designed as a lower-powered model for the Chinese market that would not breach restrictions, but which the US banned anyway in April. The president said the US would receive 25% of the proceeds, more than the 15% previously agreed to with Nvidia in an earlier deal to lift restrictions, and following similar unorthodox plans for the federal government to take a financial cut from private business dealings.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. A match made in heaven, right? AI proponent Huang appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience, run by AI disciple Joe Rogan, on Wednesday night, and the two got on like gangbusters, not surprisingly. Huang jumped in early to describe how well AI has improved -- not the least by using his company's GPUs. "In the last several years, I would say AI technology has increased, probably in the last two years alone, maybe 100X -- let's just give it a number," Huang said on the podcast .

There Is Only One AI Company. As Nvidia, OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft forge partnerships and deals, the AI industry is looking more like one interconnected machine. What does that mean for all of us? It all began, as many things do, with Elon Musk . In the early 2010s he realized that AI was on a track to become perhaps the most powerful technology of all time.