“Great business leaders create a vision, articulate it, passionately own it, and relentlessly drive it to completion.”
— Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric
The stock market is complex. Stock prices rise and fall based on a myriad of numbers, including sales, earnings, cash flow, and debt levels. The list is endless.
But apart from all the numbers behind a company’s stock price, there is something much more difficult to quantify. It’s the skills of the people who run the company.
Great leaders create great companies. And similarly, poor leaders produce poor companies.
So let’s take a look at two companies at the forefront of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution to see how great leadership shapes companies and why it makes for such great investments.
Image source: Getty Images.
Nvidia CEO jensen fan
Born in Taiwan in 1963, Jensen Huang immigrated to the United States when he was nine years old. After he earned degrees from Oregon State University and Stanford University, he briefly worked at the university. advanced micro device (AMD 1.66%).
Founded by Mr. Huang in 1993. Nvidia (NVDA 2.44%) Along with two colleagues, fellow electrical engineers Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem.
As Hwang said in a recent interview, “It wasn’t my idea, it was theirs. Chris and Curtis wanted to leave. … They had their reasons. And I really He was doing well…” [but] They just kept following me and said, ‘Hey, we want to start this company and we really want you to come.’ ”
Nvidia is currently the fifth-largest company in the United States with an impressive market capitalization of $1.4 trillion. However, at the time of its founding, there was not much demand for the company’s products.
“At that time, the way computers were designed was very divided between general-purpose computing and the use of accelerators,” Huang says. “And about 99% of that value believed in general-purpose computing and about 1% believed in acceleration.
“For 25 years, we were 99% right. We decided to start a company in accelerated computing, and at the time, the only thing you could really do with accelerated computing was find applications. It was just about finding problems that are difficult to solve or that are generally unsolvable.Purpose Computing.
“So that’s what we’ve dedicated the company to, solving problems that regular computers can’t do. And when you push that mission to the limit, that’s what leads us to self-driving cars. That led us to robotics. That led us to climate science issues, digital biology, and, of course, one of the most famous ones, artificial intelligence. ”
Since Nvidia went public in January 1999, its stock price has increased 74,000%. That means his $1,000 investment made on IPO day is now worth an amazing $744,000. Most of that increase has come in the past year and a half, as AI has captured the market. World attention.
NVDA data by YCharts.
Many companies announce plans to purchase tens or even hundreds of thousands of Nvidia’s advanced AI chips for their servers to power AI applications such as chatbots, the Metaverse, and self-driving cars. doing.
In fact, Huang’s long-term bet on accelerated computing has finally paid off, thanks in no small part to his vision and execution.
Advanced Micro Devices CEO Dr. Lisa Su
Born in Taiwan in 1969, Lisa Su immigrated to the United States when she was three years old. Interestingly, Su and Fan, her CEOs of arguably the two most important AI chip companies, were once cousins.
Sue attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received her bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. He is in the field of electrical engineering. She then took a series of jobs in. texas musical instrument, IBMFreescale Semiconductor, before taking the helm at AMD in 2014.
In a 2020 interview, Hsu shared his thoughts on management being about keeping the team focused on the vision. “It’s great what one person can do alone, but what can you do if you get 10 smart people together, or 100 smart people together?” Together, he says, 10,000 smart people united toward a vision. is unbelievable. ”
She also noted that her background does not include the formal business training that many CEOs receive. However, Sue turned this potential weakness into a strength by accepting the challenge of learning new things. She said, “I didn’t get her MBA or anything like that. I think the advice that was given to me is now actually giving to people,” which is actually very good advice and a variety of It’s about trying things out. ”
And considering AMD’s financial performance during her tenure, it’s hard to argue with her approach. Since she was named CEO in 2014, AMD stock has soared about 5,000%.
AMD data by YCharts.
Like Nvidia, AMD is riding a wave of demand for advanced semiconductors. The company recently debuted its new MI300 series accelerators, which are meant to compete head-on with Nvidia’s cutting-edge chips. It’s too early to tell whether AMD’s products will gain significant market share, but several big-name companies have already announced plans to use AMD. microsoft, oracleand meta platform.
In summary, AMD and Nvidia are both great companies at the forefront of a technological revolution. That’s partly due to the CEO’s visionary leadership, which is difficult to quantify but still very important.
