Editorial illustration – Steve Jobs saw the iPhone in the iPod. Jensen Huang saw a future for graphics chips far beyond gaming. Jobs’s second act at Apple is a reminder of what a founder can bring back to the company he helped build. Who will see the next leap?
By : Ya Libnan Editor , Opinion
Apple and Nvidia as we know them might never have existed without Steve Jobs and Jensen Huang. Both had co-founders and gifted engineers. What Jobs and Huang brought was a vision of what those engineers could build years before the market could see it. Jobs saw how a phone could become a computer people carried everywhere. Huang saw how chips built for graphics could become engines of scientific computing and, eventually, artificial intelligence.
Their departures put the same question to two very different companies. Who would see the next opportunity early enough to bet the company’s future on it? Apple on the original iPhone · Nvidia on CUDA
How two founders lost power
At Apple, Jobs clashed with Chief Executive John Sculley over the company’s direction. The board sided with Sculley. Jobs lost his operating authority and resigned in September. Years later, he described the experience to Stanford graduates in blunt terms. “And then I got fired.” That was how it felt to the man who had helped build Apple, even though his formal departure came by resignation. Stanford commencement address · The Washington Post
At Nvidia, the question facing directors was one of trust and oversight. Reuters reported that Huang had an affair with a former executive at Nvidia customer Megaspeed and described their interactions to company leaders as routine business dealings. U.S. authorities reportedly suspected the woman of working for Chinese intelligence. Reuters could not independently verify the espionage allegation, and Beijing denied it. Nvidia’s independent directors hired outside counsel to investigate. The board accepted Huang’s resignation as CEO, president and director on November 11 and announced it the next day. A change at the top leaves the board responsible for finding out how sensitive customer relationships were handled and what it should have known sooner. Reuters · Nvidia’s SEC filing
My previous op-ed asked what Washington did to protect America’s AI technology. This one asks what Nvidia stands to lose when the visionary who built it is gone. Previous Ya Libnan op-ed
What Apple lost when Jobs died
After Jobs lost his operating authority in 1985, he founded NeXT. Apple eventually bought the company, bringing him back, and he became interim CEO in 1997. Under Jobs, Apple introduced the iPod in 2001. It helped lay the groundwork for the iPhone by showing how much people valued a pocket-sized device that made digital media easy to use. When Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007, he presented it as three devices in one, combining a widescreen iPod with a phone and an internet device. The iPod was the first step toward a device that would change how people used the internet itself. Stanford commencement address · Britannica · Apple on the iPod · Apple on the iPhone
Since Jobs died in 2011, the Apple Watch, launched in 2015, stands out to me as the one major new consumer product that changed how people use Apple technology in everyday life. It put health tracking, fitness and communication on the wrist. AirPods made wireless listening easier, and the M1 was a major engineering achievement. In my view, none of these advances changed Apple’s direction or the wider industry on the scale of the iPod-to-iPhone leap. That is the kind of leap I expect Nvidia to find harder to make without Huang. Apple on the Apple Watch · Apple on AirPods · Apple on M1
Why I expect Nvidia to follow a similar path
When Nvidia introduced CUDA in 2006, it gave developers a way to put graphics processors to work on problems far removed from video games. The bet was on software as much as on chips. Years later, as demand for AI computing surged, Nvidia already had the hardware and a software platform that developers knew how to use. That is what a visionary can do for a company. He can commit resources years before most people see what the investment is for. Nvidia’s CUDA documentation
I expect Nvidia to keep building faster chips and improving the software behind them. It may remain a dominant company for years. What I doubt is whether it will make another leap on the scale of turning a graphics-chip company into a pillar of the AI industry. Its interim chief executive, longtime CFO Colette Kress, knows the business. The board’s hardest job is finding a leader who can see what comes after today’s AI boom and persuade the company to invest before its customers start asking for it. Nvidia’s transition announcement
Nvidia can appoint a new CEO. The harder question is whether it can find another person who sees a future the rest of the industry has yet to imagine.
