From gaming favorite to new Wall Street favourite

Recently, Nvidia climbed to the top of the list of companies that the American Nasdaq exchange considers the world’s most valuable. The adventurous increase in value is due to the fact that a few years ago the company chose to invest in data chips that may resemble the graphics card in a typical computer game PC, but which are much more powerful and intended for the machines behind Ki programs such as Chat gpt. – Many others can make the chips, but nobody makes chips as good as Nvidia today, and everyone who tries to make the most exciting applications within artificial intelligence therefore uses Nvidia, says investment director at Nordea, Robert Næss. – Keep me far away Since Nvidia became the world’s most valuable company, it took a few days before Microsoft and Apple again caught up. The investment director at Nordea says the companies are so close in value that it is not surprising that Nvidia lost first place so quickly. – A quarter of these companies alone are worth more than double the Oil Fund. On Friday, those who bet on the Nvidia share paid around 50 times what one thought the company would earn over the next twelve months, said Nordea’s investment director. – Normally, one thinks that the value of a company is between 10 and 15 times current earnings. So this is unusual, he says. Investment director Robert Næss at Nordea. Photo: Nordea And especially unusual when it comes to the world’s largest company. Næss has only seen this happen once in the past decades – with Microsoft in 1999 – before the so-called IT bubble (also known as the Dot com bubble) burst in 2001. – Still quite sad, not for the company, but for the shareholders . If you bought Microsoft at the end of 1999, in the next ten years you would lose two to three thirds of the value, before it turned around again, says Næss. – So you are not buying Nvidia shares on behalf of Nordea today? – No, I don’t dare. I think valuation has something to say. I stay far away, replies Næss. But other investors have threatened that the share will continue to increase in price. – Others join the party, as long as he lasts. It may well be that Nvidia can sell whatever they want of computer chips for artificial intelligence for quite some time, and then interest will continue to increase. From gamer company to artificial intelligence It’s not just on the stock exchange that people have turned a blind eye to Nvidia’s enormous growth in recent years. – It’s absolutely insane. It was a gaming company. Suddenly they are a company that can take over the world. Incredibly strange, says Henrik Steinshamn to news. He has built his own computers and played a lot since primary school. Steinshamn crouches under the desk in his bedroom, pulls out the computer case, opens the lid and points to the green-lighting Geforce graphics card made by Nvidia. Like the roaring lion before films of Lions Gate, the logo of Nvidia has been one of the first things to meet vagabonds in the “boot screen” of several well-known computer games since the nineties. For example, in last year’s critically acclaimed Baldur’s Gate 3. Although Steinshamn has played with graphics cards from Nvidia for a number of years, he has not heard of the company. So he looks up some photographs of him online. – Looks like a trick! Jensen Huang meets Crown Prince Haakon outside Nvidia’s office in Santa Clara, California in April. Jensen Huang poses for a selfie with a group of journalists in Taiwan in June. Huang throws a baseball during a game between CTBC Brothers and Wei Dragons at the Tapei Dome in Taiwan in June. Huang shows off some tricks at an Nvidia event in March. The man behind The success with the Ai chips has made Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang a rock star in the tech world, writes the BBC. As a rule, he is just called “Jensen” Huang. When Huang has taken various stages to present new Nvidia technology and talk about AI over the past year, it has been reminiscent of the cult atmosphere surrounding the now deceased Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ presentations of new PCs, mp3 players and phones. Perhaps that is why Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has called him “the Taylor Swift of the industry”? The Taiwanese-American has definitely picked up several tricks from Steve Jobs, Zuckerberg and other tech moguls when it comes to branding himself and the company. For example on the clothing front. Apple founder Steve Jobs has both inspired and been parodied for his iconic style of clothing. Photo: News player Jobs was known to wear turtlenecks, jeans and sneakers from the same brand. According to the BBC, Huang has used leather jackets as his signature garment since around the turn of the millennium. – Leather jackets can signal an “edge”, i.e. a willingness to break rules, do things differently and challenge the “status quo”, says fashion stylist Sera Murphy to the channel. It is not necessarily “something one picks up”, but like Jobs, Huang is a perfectionist. In an interview with 60 minutes, he admits (with a grin!) that he is very demanding to work with – something Jobs definitely was too. A smaller grey-haired “Jensen” in a leather jacket during a conference in Taiwan in 2017. Photo: AP But unlike Jobs, who was known for focusing on design and user-friendly products, Huang’s great strength lies elsewhere, says investment director at Nordea , Robert Næss. In addition to the fact that “Jensen” is known for working extremely hard and “knows everything in detail”, says Næss, that Huang only speaks about what he can do. – He is perhaps the person who knows the most about computer chips and software in the whole world. Unlike Elon Musk, he has no opinions on other matters. But about what he is doing, he has a lot of opinions, and is also listened to by a lot of people, says Næss. Published 24.06.2024, at 18.24



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