Nvidia surpasses Apple as the world's most valuable company, all starting from a humble breakfast booth at Denny's.

On Monday, Nvidia surpassed Apple as the world's most valuable company, marking a milestone in its transformation from a startup to a tech titan.

On Monday, Nvidia's market value increased to $3.38 trillion after its shares rose, surpassing Apple's $3.35 trillion market cap. This happened just days after Nvidia was announced as the new member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, replacing Intel.

On Monday evening, Nvidia's market value was $3.34 trillion, while Apple's was $3.38 trillion.

Nvidia's dominant market position, resulting from its development of powerful computer chips for artificial intelligence models, is a far cry from its origins as a 3D graphics company for video games. Co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang and his two friends, engineers Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, started the business in 1993 while eating at a Denny's restaurant in San Jose, California, Huang revealed in an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes" in April.

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At age 15, Huang worked as a busboy at the same restaurant where he was inspired to pursue his passion at the age of 30, he said.

"Huang stated, "We sat right back there in this Denny's and decided to start the company. Honestly, none of us knew how to do it or anything.""

From breakfast booth to booming business

In 1995, Nvidia introduced the NV1, a low-cost computer processing chip, which helped them secure a partnership with Sega to bring its games to personal computers.

Huang informed graduating students at National Taiwan University in May 2023 that the chip was a failure due to its technical inadequacy, which prevented it from rendering any significant level of graphics. This error almost led the company to bankruptcy, but Huang was able to negotiate a contract buyout with Sega, which provided Nvidia with the financial support and resources needed to develop the NV1's successor.

In 1997, Nvidia released the RIVA 128 chip, which quickly gained popularity and became a commercial success. By the 2010s, the company had expanded its focus beyond video games to include laptop computers, automobiles, AI, and cloud-based computing, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Nvidia has experienced significant growth since the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot in 2022, with its shares returning over 500% since the start of 2023, according to Goldman Sachs. If you invested $10,000 in the company 25 years ago, you'd now have over $32 million, as calculated by CNBC last month.

The secret to Huang's success

The CEO of Nvidia did not expect that the company's expansion into AI technology would be facilitated by its creation of a high-performance graphics processing unit, according to the billionaire CEO.

"Huang stated that the capability they invented was based on luck and vision. The researchers who were developing deep learning discovered this architecture, which proved to be ideal for AI."

According to cognitive neuroscientist Tali Sharot, that specific type of optimism is essential for achieving success in life and career.

"In a 2012 TED Talk, Sharot stated that optimism alters subjective reality. Our expectations of the world shape our perception of it. Additionally, optimism influences objective reality by acting as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Research has demonstrated that optimism is linked to success and even leads to it."

Huang, a 61-year-old individual, was amazed by how a meal at Denny's led to the creation of a tech giant and emphasized that commitment is key to success.

"This is truly remarkable," he stated. "That a typical dishwasher busboy could achieve such success. There's no secret. It's simply the result of 61 years of daily effort. I believe there's nothing more to it than that."

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