What Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told the founder of this Google rival after investing in his startup

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Hungry upstarts don’t always attract the attention of the big players, but in the case of You.com, founder Richard Socher got a front-row seat with Nvidia’s Jensen Huang.

“I was extremely impressed with Jensen,” Socher told Yahoo Finance executive editor Brian Sozzi on Yahoo Finance’s Opening Bid podcast (see video above; listen below).

Its AI-powered search engine recently announced a $50 million Series B round with investors including Nvidia ( NVDA ), Salesforce ( CRM ) Ventures, and DuckDuckGo. The capital raising valued rival Google (GOOG) and Yahoo at nearly $1 billion.

Socher said he met with Huang for nearly two hours during the investment, discussing topics ranging from history to running a business.

“I don’t generally get nervous with most people, but it was very impressive to hear him give advice,” Socher said.

During his conversation, Socher said Huang said he “focused a lot on the speed of Nvidia” in the early years.

In the end, Nvidia opted to pivot a bit to focus.

“At some point, they realized that the best way is to focus on games first and really dominate that niche,” Socher said, adding that Huang suggested staying focused on You.com’s mission to be an artificial intelligence-based alternative to Google.

This isn’t the first time Socher and Nvidia have crossed paths.

In the early 2010s, his research group at Stanford used Nvidia GPUs. At that time, Nvidia mostly sold GPU products to the graphics sector. “Nvidia said, ‘Who are you? Why are you trying to buy our GPUs?'” Socher said, noting that GPUs are now helping the company’s AI workloads.

Nvidia launched in 1993—born from Huang’s scribblings on a napkin at a Denny’s—to develop 3D graphics for gaming and multimedia purposes. Back then, more and more consumers were making the leap into computing, leading to demand for more powerful computers.

Six years later, Nvidia introduced graphics processing units (GPUs), and in 2012, it brought AI to the fore with the introduction of the AlexNet neural network.

This summer, Nvidia introduced an initiative that would bring generative AI to a wider audience using the latest GPU technology. The company’s AI chips are seen as having a big performance lead over rivals AMD ( AMD ) and Intel ( INTC ), leading to impressive financial results over the past two years.

Nvidia’s second-quarter sales and earnings were up 122% and 152%, respectively, from a year earlier.

The story continues

After a summer retreat following mixed third-quarter guidance, Nvidia is now the world’s third most valuable company. It has a market capitalization of $2.98 trillion, while Microsoft stands at $3.18 trillion and Apple at $3.46 trillion, according to Yahoo Finance’s comparison tool.

The stock is up 145% year to date, compared with an 18% gain for the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite.

Three times a week, Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi insightful field conversations and chats with the biggest names in business and markets Opening offer. You can find more episodes on our website video hub or follow you your favorite streaming service.

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