Chamath Palihapitiya

From TPU Founder to Nvidia: A Decade of Gratitude

Taken Sep 1, 2016 when @JonathanRoss321 convinced me we could take on the giants, build new silicon and that AI was coming. In typical SV fashion, we didn’t even have a company yet - just a term sheet from me to invest and the three of us. I spent the next month recruiting as many of the TPU team from Google Wisconsin as I could. “Welcome to chips”, I thought. The company, as with all important companies, went through its own trials and tribulations including promoting Jonathan from CTO to CEO and the inevitable falling out and repair of his and my relationship. Anyways, it all happened for a reason. Today we close this almost decade chapter and Jonathan starts a new one with nVidia. I can’t thank him enough. Sometimes it’s simply better to be lucky than good and be fortunate enough to work with great people and follow them into battle. That is me here. Jonathan was not only the father of TPU when he was at Google but he is a technical genius of biblical proportions. He also assembled a great team with folks like @sundeep and @GavinSherry to back him up. They will also do incredible things at nvidia. Separately, whenever something I’m involved in either crashes or wins, I reread my thoughts when I first did it. Was it luck? Was it skill? What did I learn? What do I do now? YMMV, but I am attaching the original investment memo I wrote a decade ago. I’ll do a more substantive view on why this deal matters and what my guess is about the future of AI silicon from here on an upcoming episode of the pod. In the meantime, Merry Christmas. I am very thankful. So thank you Jonathan, Sunny, Gavin and the entire Groq team. 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽