It was 2016 when the number one of NVidiaJen-Hsun Huang, stepped forward to donate a DGX-1 server to a newly founded startup, OpenAI. Born under the wing of Elon Musk, at the end of 2015, OpenAI had a bright future ahead of it: we all know the whirlwind rise of the company and the very close link now established with Microsoft and its products.
DGX-1 it was the first server system (the first of a long series) designed by NVidia for the acceleration of computing performance in the field of artificial intelligence and deep learning. Equipped with an NVidia Tesla GPU battery, the system aimed to offer the best possible performance in gaming tasks parallel computing. The machine was pre-configured with software for deep learning and development tools, making it easier to deploy and use advanced models.
In short, Huang’s initiative was the most tangible confirmation of his belief in the success of the applications of artificial intelligence and in the potential of the newly born OpenAI.
Elon Musk commemorates the event with the publication of a series of unpublished photos
Co-founder of OpenAI, Musk left the company in 2018 due to alleged conflicts of interest and the perceived change of direction by the non-profit organization, a true pioneer in the artificial intelligence sector. Today OpenAI is one commercial reality to all intents and purposes, far from the strong inclinations towards the open source world that it had shown at the beginning. A mode of operation which fueled quite a bit of friction between Musk and the current CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman.
In a post published on XMusk however wanted to celebrate the first days of OpenAI and the initiative promoted by Huang with the publication of a series of unpublished photos, taken at the time of the donation of DGX-1.
“I would like to thank NVidia and Jensen for donating the first AI supercomputer DGX-1 to OpenAI, supporting the democratization of artificial intelligence“, Musk wrote in 2016. And today, remembering that historic one tweet and by adding photos taken from his personal archive he launched a heavy dig at the current management: “look now what happened to OpenAI“.
The reference is, obviously, to the path undertaken by OpenAI in recent years. Musk recalls that he chose the name “Open” for “OpenAI” for the startup to serve as counterweight to Google. “But now it has become a closed source, profit-making company and effectively controlled by Microsoft“, he added.
What the DGX-1 system donated by NVidia looked like
The NVidia DGX-1 AI supercomputer has undergone significant upgrades since its launch in 2016. When Huang brought it to OpenAI, however, it was a $129,000 system that integrated 8 GPU NVidia Tesla P100 (Pascal), with the entire system capable of expressing up to 170 TeraFLOPs (FP16) of power.
NVidia subsequently launched DGX-2 (Time), Server DGX A100 (Ampere) and its latest generation Server DGX H100 (Hopper). Even larger systems like the supercomputer DGX GH200 AI which uses 256 Grace Hopper Superchips in total, are the newest products in the family.
Artificial intelligence solutions enrich the coffers of NVidia which is growing rapidly
That investment and the others that followed are confirmation of Huang’s “right” vision. Today NVidia as a company has reached $250 billion in value on the stock market, its all-time high. NVidia therefore becomes the third company with the best capitalization ever after Microsoft and Apple.
The CEO of NVidia thus saw his assets rise from 8.5 billion dollars to 68.1 billion dollars, placing him in 21st place among the richest people in the world.
The company’s impressive performance is driven by strong demand for GPU AI e HPCas well as graphics cards for the professional world and segment gaming.
Obviously, the most important revenues come from orders from partners high-techstarting from cloud service providers like Microsoft, Google, Meta and others. And although the US continues to block product exports to China, NVidia’s dominance in the computer market high-end AI processors remains unchallenged (about 80% belongs to the company led by Huang).
The photos in the article are taken from Elon Musk’s post.