Visiting Taiwan w/ Jensen Huang | Lex Fridman

- We're gonna hang out for a couple days. Oh, good. I'm gonna show him Taiwan. It blew my mind. - Look at that. - Ladies and gentlemen, Lex Fridman. Hello, everyone. This is the famous oyster pancake. - Amaze, amaze, amaze. - Beatles in the '60s. - Jensen, thank you. - Jensen loves the night market way too much not to do it. This smells delicious. Let's see what this is. Let's try this thing. Doesn't make any sense. Amazing. That's a wrap on one of the most incredible weeks of my life. I'm visiting Taiwan, first time for me in part to hang out with Jensen Huang, the CEO and founder of NVIDIA, which is the world's most valuable company, and also one of the most consequential companies in the history of human civilization. And I'm also here to attend Computex, which is this gigantic conference, just a sea of engineers at the heart of the land of engineers in Taipei.

Now, Taiwan is this island that's two-thirds mountains, and this one island is responsible for more than 90% of the most advanced semiconductors in the world. Basically, every computer, every smartphone, every GPU, every AI data center would not exist without this one place. Virtually impossible to replicate anywhere in the world. You know, I often think about ancient history, human civilization, and places like Göbekli Tepe or the Egyptian pyramids, and there's a lot of mystery about how was it built. And it's humbling to know that there's places on earth like those ancient constructions that we still don't quite understand how it's built. How is it that Taiwan comes to dominate so much of the semiconductor industry? And of course, there are answers. Some of it is culture. Some of it is the education system and how much engineering is prized within the education system. And of course, all of it has huge implications, technological and geopolitical, for the coming years, decades, centuries. I, of course, want us to compete but remain friends, and I think a big part of that is understanding each other, understanding each other's culture, each history, and respecting it, but also working together, and the interlinked economies, technologies, supply chains. But also humans, talking to each other, marrying each

other, drinking beer together, eating together, all of that, and that's what I'm trying to do, and that's what I'm trying to do here, and it's a huge honor to be able to do that amongst so many incredible engineers that come from all across the world, and to also be able to do that with the one and only Jensen, a great human being, that after all of these years, he's able to maintain humility and to truly be able to listen and to recognize everybody around him as a human being, including me. It's a huge honor. Plus, the guy's a foodie. There's no better person to be eating some great Taiwanese food than with Jensen. All right, let's go. - Hey. - Jensen. - Lex, how's it going? - Good to see you. - Welcome to Taiwan. Hey, guys. Do you know who this is? Yes. The great- Lex. Yes. I love you. - I love you, too. - You know, he's known worldwide as Lex, just like me, Jensen. - You know you made it when you're just one name. - You're just one name. - Beyoncé. - Jensen, Beyoncé. How was China?

- Incredible. - Incredible. - So much kindness. - Lex. - You're a rock star. - Hey, guys. Nice to see you guys. Hello. Hello, hello. Hello. Nice to see you guys. Nice to see you guys. Hello, everybody. - Okay, this legit is pretty insane. Jensen, I- - Mike, do you know the famous Lex Fridman? - Good to meet you. - Look at this guy. He went... He's just traveling through Asia. - Hey, guys. Good to- - Does everybody know the famous Lex Fridman? - Oh, stop it. Stop it. - Whoo. - Jensen, I love you. - Look at this. Look at this. No cables. No cables. No hoses. Yes. 100% liquid cooled. Yes. Last generation, Grace Blackwell, was only 80% liquid cooled. Now, it's 100% liquid cooled. From two hours to assemble, it's now five minutes. Things that are easy to build- Yeah ... are also reliable. - Officially in full production, right? - Yeah. Yeah. Full production now. Incredible, right?

- Yeah, it's incredible. - All this. Everything. - And the Vera CPU, you're full in on the CPU. I saw the- - Yeah. Yeah. - ... 1.8x over x86. - Oh, it's incredible. x86 CPUs, the hyperscale CPUs were designed to be rented. - Mm-hmm. - And so you want as many CPU cores as possible- - Yes. - ... because the economics of CPUs in the last generation was how, what's the dollars per core? In this new world, no, AI doesn't rent cores. Yeah. AI generates tokens, and they sell tokens. Yeah. Yes. And so your per- Correct ... fundamental purpose is to go through that exchange- Yeah ... go through that loop as fast as you can- Yeah ... and generate tokens as fast as you can. - The more you buy, the more you make. You might be the best salesman in the world. That's a good line. - Well, Lex, it's easy. You know? It's not a complicated thing. - Yeah. - The technology is complicated- ... but the business model. Amaze, amaze, amaze. Thank you. All right, Lex, you gotta sign here. Lex was here too. - All right. - The great Lex Fridman. Yes. Yeah. - The love I'm getting right here. - Awesome. - This is incredible. - He just happened to be here? No, he just didn't happen to be here. He flew out to hang out. We're gonna hang out for a couple days. Oh, good. I'm gonna show him Taiwan.

Oh. Lex has got a awesome podcast. Very long ones. - Very, very long. - Then you learn a lot. - You learn a lot. - And learn a lot. And learn a lot. - Thank you. - AI is a five-layer cake. I think I'll have that one. Lex, have a bite. - I think I'll have that, the green one. - Did you enjoy some good food? - Yeah. - Crazy? - Yeah, street food. - Crazy? - Insane. - Crazy? It's good. - Not bad. This is a conference cake. - Yes, let's do that. - Now let's welcome Jensen and all our Quanta QCT executives on the stage to take one last group photo. - Jensen legit is, like, the Beatles in the '60s. - Except the Beatles actually had talent. - Yeah, right. Well, I saw you dance on stage. It was all right. It was pretty good. - That wasn't quite John Travolta talent. - Remember that?

- Oh my goodness. This is one of the best. - I have so many happy memories of that. - Oh, yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SK Hynix. Trillion-dollar company. No wonder supply's so tight. Memory's so big. You want a sandwich? - SK Hynix, legendary high bandwidth memory company. - We invented this, LPDDR memory into data centers. Twice the bandwidth, half the power. Twice the bandwidth, half the power. - And now please make more. - Yeah, yeah. Please make more. Oh, look at that. That's beautiful. You know, when I was young, I would think that that's not good. But now, I love wabi-sabi. You know, beautiful things- - Yeah. - ... imperfect. - Yeah. - Yeah. I love that. - Imperfection is beauty. - Yeah, look at that. One of a kind. - That's my favorite part, is all the different GPUs that people are- - I know. - The old school- - Isn't that amazing? - The old school 1080- - Yeah, yeah - ... the Titan RTX. - This one. Look at this one.

- Nice. - This is the- - Titan. - ... 1080 generation Titan. You know, I've seen this on TV. Let me explain. - Anniversary. - We're brothers. - We're brothers. - Yeah, we're brothers. - Cheers. - There you go, man. - All right, thank you. It's pretty good. - It's nice to have just a... - I love this guy. - Hey. Oh, I love these people. - Oh, yeah. - Lex, try this. Lex. - Mechanical? - Oh, God. They're the best. - Oh, nice. - Look how delightful they feel. This is real joy. - I have bad news for you. - Oh. - In the future, it's mostly gonna be voice control. - I think so, yeah. I think better typing, don't you? - Yeah, yeah. - I have a hard time thinking when I'm just talking. - Speed is not everything. Sometimes you have to pause and think. Look at that. Back to the '80s. Look at this. Jensen, you need this for AI.

This for you. This, this, this, this, this. Thank you, brother. - Ladies and gentlemen, Lex Fridman. Hello, everyone. People are nice. - So much love. - People are nice. - So much love. So much kindness. - Yeah. - Were you nervous before the keynote? The whole world- - I'm always- I was super nervous, - ... the whole world watching- - ... I was super nervous, but I'm always nervous. You know, every public speaking, doesn't matter what it is. - Keeps you sharp? - Yeah, well, I don't take it for granted. And, you know, I want to do a good job, and it's because everything comes together such a last moment, it's hard to practice at all, and we don't. And so, you know, so I don't know exactly all the words that I'm gonna say. - Mm-hmm. - And there's no teleprompter. If we're gonna go build and sell a few trillion dollars of computing over the next several years, this entire island has to be part of it. - Mm-hmm. - This entire ecosystem has to be part of it. - Yeah. - Every single one of these companies are gonna have to invest hundreds of billions of dollars over the next several years.

- Mm-hmm. - And so they've got- they gotta, one, understand it, be inspired by it, want to be part of it, and understand how they can benefit from it. - Mm-hmm. - And so, you know, in the keynote, I tried to distill that down to as few words as possible. Not like this guy. - By the way, Jensen shows, I mean, obviously shows humongous amount of love to me that I don't deserve, but he shows love to everybody. Everybody. And you give some love to the gamers too, with the laptops and the games. - Oh, I love the gamers. That's where we all begin. You know, don't forget your roots. You know? No matter how high you are, don't let your feet leave the ground. - Some of the most passionate humans on earth are gamers, and some of the happiest moments in my whole life is playing video games on NVIDIA hardware. Look at that. Look at that. - Look at... Look at all these people.

- It's unbelievable, man. - It's an honor of a lifetime. Thank you for this experience. - Wow. Hey, well, I really love hanging out with you. Okay, are we gonna go get it done? - Let's get it done. - Let's go get it done. Can you sign this for me? - FIRST Robotics shirt. - Oh, wow. - Thank you. Thank you. - Love this. Look at that, 2026. - Young engineers building robots. Most of them probably running on NVIDIA brain. - Love that. Now, you gotta sign it too. All right. Here, I'll hold that for you. Thanks, man. - Thank you. - Keep going. - Thank you. - There you go. So good. - Keep going, keep going. - So good. - Thank you. - Good job. Hey, Lex. There's more here. - And more here. More here. More here. - Thank you very much. - Cheers. - Yeah, cheers, guys. Cheers, cheers. - Cheers. - Cheers. - Cheers. - And also for Oliver. - Cheers. Cheers, Jerry. - Yeah. Seriously, seriously.

- I love this. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good? - Let me try it. - Beyond good. That guy's seen it. - Mm. - That's right. - Beyond good. - And after you finish it, please sign for us. - Amazing. - Wow. - Really good. - I really needed that. - Yeah. - This should be a long day for you. Starting from morning. Yeah. - Uh, doughy, salty- - Oh. - ... with a nice beer. Taiwanese beer. - Taiwanese beer. - Yeah. - The best part of the tour right here. - Exactly. - Oh, man. Oh, my God. - Now you just have to 3D print a statue. - Please don't do that. Okay, you guys. Thank you. - Bye. - Come on, Lex. You with me. Lex. Where's Lex? - Here. - Get on the other side.

- You sure? You good? - Yeah, yeah, of course. - Thank you. Thank you, sir. - I'm not gonna strand you in Taiwan. You know I'm gonna find you again. - Yeah, exactly. In a river somewhere. What an incredible, incredible experience. - It's truly amazing how much... You know, there's this outpouring of love and- - It's really inspiring to see an engineer be treated like a rock star, 'cause engineers build the world, and they don't often get the love- ... I think they deserve. Yeah, and you're, like, an inspiration to, to thousands, millions of young kids who will, like, "Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be an engineer, too." - That's right. Exactly. Exactly. - How was your China trip? - Oh, my God, my China trip was chaos. Did you see all the stuff? I go downtown Beijing, it just turned into mayhem, complete mayhem. - Yeah, you got some food, right? You got- - I had food from every restaurant. And then I became their poster child- ... of every single restaurant. It didn't take them long. It was, like, maybe about half an hour. I was on the web with... For every restaurant. Tomorrow we have incredible lunch.

- Mm-hmm. - Okay? It is, like, just utterly crazy. It's rice dumplings. - Nice. - They wrap it in tea leaves. - Nice. - And this is, this one is as good as it gets. - Yeah, Computex, thank you for this. Thank you for suggesting it. I don't think I've ever experienced anything like it. Just great engineers everywhere. - This is, this is where the world builds computers. - All right. - And people are so humble, you know? - Yeah, humility. - People are so humble. - Humility. That was one of the things I've experienced in China, 'cause I also interviewed a bunch of the AI folks, and here in Taiwan same thing. It's just humility. Nonstop humility. - Yeah. - These folks, young engineers are changing the world. - Yeah. - There's, there's no arrogance whatsoever. - In United States, we've gotta get manufacturing back. And this is, AI... During the, during the AI boom is our best chance to invest in the grid, invest in sustainable energy, invest in manufacturing again. There's so much demand. And so whether the demand is so great, whether you manufacture, you know, anywhere in y- in the world- - Mm-hmm - ... Fact is you can afford it. And so you might as well manufacture in United States as well.

Take the opportunity. And now with AI in manufacturing, robotics in manufacturing, this might be the perfect time to reindustrialize the United States and move a lot of the industries that we've kinda lost over the years, you know, back into United States. That's what, that's what I'm hoping for. Really working hard to reindustrialize the US, and this is, this is just a great time to do it. - Yeah, the TSMC folks say you have to visit Arizona. - Yeah. Yeah, it's true. It's true. You know, what's, what's really great is that, that Taiwan is a strategic partner in reindustrializing United States. Look, we're trying to set up fabs in United States, and what do they do? They send a bunch of engineers. They invest a whole bunch of money. It's not easy building up a world-class semiconductor manufacturing in United States because there's just not enough talent there. So they shipped a whole bunch of people, they're training people, they're bringing, bringing... You know, Taiwan is really, really truly from a technology perspective, a real strategic partner to United States. Yeah. You know, I just really hope that people see that.

- Do you have some wisdom to understand why so many of the incredible companies at every layer of the stack, especially in the hardware infrastructure, come from here? - Well, this can go back to a gentleman named K. T. Li, and as part, part of their, their Science and Industries Ministry. And he was chartered with... And he had a vision, um, in the '50s to, to bring science and technology and technology manufacturing to the island. And it was, it was really his vision that compelled Morris to come back. - Mm-hmm. - And before all of that happened, and I forget exactly how the history went, but Philips, which is the parent company that spun off the fab that became TSMC and spun off the semiconductor manufacturing equipment that became ASML, it's amazing that it came from Philips. A consumer electronics... They were the GE of Europe.

- Mm. - And GE, as you recall, was also in semiconductor manufacturing in the early days, and they were doing all of, you know, advanced manufacturing as well. But somehow he attracted Philips to come to Taiwan, and that was really the beginnings. - The implant of the seed. - Yeah, yeah. And from UMC and TSMC, which were seeking to manufacture the right type of chips, the perfect timing happened with the PC revolution. IBM, in their wisdom opened the specifications of what is called the IBM Compatible Chipsets. Basically, all the chips that made up for the motherboard, the cache controller, memory controller, interrupt controller- The VGA controller, the graphics controller. That, that specification was con- was specified and open. Well, all these smart engineers, ended up taking that specification and designing the chipsets that were manufactured at TSMC and UMC. That is the beginning- - Mm-hmm.

- ... of how the PC industry really evolved. What started out as Compaq, IBM, because of Taiwan PC chipsets were available to all kinds of companies, including, you know, this little kid named Michael Dell. - Mm-hmm. - And so he was just he just bought motherboards from Taiwan, assembled them into a PC, bought an operating system, licensed an operating system from Microsoft. - Mm-hmm. - He became a PC maker. That entire loop, you know, Michael has a relationship with Taiwan that goes way back. - And he's from Austin, Texas. - Yeah. - Pride of Austin. - Yeah. - And he's doing- - What a good guy. - Yeah. Great, great. - What a nice man. - Great human being. - Yeah, really great human being. - There's something about the culture. I had this really nice woman say that she grew up in Taiwan, and said, "As a girl, I learned how to spell CoWoS before I could spell Gucci." I thought it was a good line. That's- ... that also says something about the- - Yeah - ... value of engineering in the culture. - That's right. - Like, what's considered cool. - CoWoS. - So thank you for, thank you for bringing cool back, Jensen. - Yeah, we brought sexy back to technology.

- Bringing sexy back. All right. Thank you, brother. - Yeah. - Thank you so much. - So tomorrow night, dinner. - Yep. - Okay? - And night market. - Yeah, night market afterwards. - Okay. Stay strong. - All right. - Couldn't help it. Had to. Jensen loves the night market way too much not to do it. - It's so good. - Oh, they love Jensen. - Thank you, thank you. Wow, so hot! Fresh out of the oven. Awesome! - No, no, no, no, no. - This looks incredible. - Eat it now. This one's the best. - Cheers.

- All right, I officially can't wait to eat this. - Cheers. - This is nuts. - Don't lose, don't lose, don't lose the white kid. - I got him. - You can save one. Pineapple or watermelon? - I think watermelon. - Watermelon, right? - Watermelon. - Watermelon. It's a like hamburger. - Nice. - Take a bite. I think it's time. I think it's cool enough now. - Yes, nice and warm. - Yeah, I think it's cool enough now. You're gonna like that a lot. - Oh, this is amazing. - I know. Nice to meet you. - I'll hold our camera. - Mm. - It's really hot outside. This is nice and cold, super refreshing. - Mystery ball.

- Sweet potato. - It is so good. - Try one. - So it's empty on the inside, crunchy on the outside. It's like a sweet potato marshmallow. - That was delicious. Orange- - Watch out. - ... uh, I think so, NVIDIA. - One, two, three, four. - Original. - The one we're going with? - I think so, just simple. - Yeah. - Too salty? - No, no, perfect. Delicious, right? - That was hot. Thank you. - Oh, okay, younger brother. Come here, little man. - All right. - Looks delicious.

- It's my treat. - No, no, please. If you do this, I can't come back. - It's fine, it's fine. - It's a tip. - No tip needed. Please. - Then I can't come back. Refused to take my money. Look at him. Look at him. He squeezed the, he squeezed the money right back into the bag. - Okay, sure. Okay. - Cheers. Cheers. - Cheers. - So good. - Very good. - I didn't want you to impale yourself. - All right, guys. - Cheers. Oh, nice. This is nice cold Taiwan beer. What is it? - Oh, a little of this noodle. - That's amazing. - Amazing, right?

- Spicy. It's really good noodle. It's really good noodle. - Wow. - Somebody handed this to Jensen. I'm enjoying the hell out of it. That might be the best food I've ever had. - Okay, look at this. Doesn't make any sense. - This is your vegetable. - Yeah, I think that counts. - We need to make sure we get a balanced meal. Yeah. - Some cinnamon. - I bet it's like a cinnamon... It's like a snickerdoodle meets corn. - Mm-hmm. This is good. - What could be bad? It's so good. Cooked the right amount. - For me, probably the noodle was number one. - Me noodle. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, that was good. That was good. And whatever that sweet potato- - Those little balls? There's still some more of those. - That was really good. - Those were delicious. Second best. - Those were really good. - Going back out there for some shaved ice. - All right, let's go. All right.

- Thank you. Once more into the breach. Thank you. - Whoa, whoa. All right, guys. Excuse us. Excuse us. Make some money. Hello, everybody. Hey, that's me. That's me. - No, it's not. - Hey, that's why we have hair. - That's not you. - That's why we have hair. You have a very limited wardrobe. That's true. Limited suggests there's more than this. - Than more than one. So Jensen was here, I think, a day or two ago, and a lot of these folks came here because he was here a couple days ago. And now they're like, "I did, we didn't expect you to also..." He comes with the place, basically. - Peace out. And this, it feels like a movie opportunity between, like, 11:00 and 1:00. Lex, was this your first shaved ice? - First time. - Oh, okay. Well - Can we get a selfie, me and you? - That is incredible.

- So good, right? - Stupid amazing, right? - Stupid amazing is right. - Yeah, yeah. - Part of my home. I know. - You can't explain this. - No. No. People tried to explain it to me. Not even close. Not even close. - Watermelon, amazing. - Why all that? - Check it out. - This is Joy. - Mm-hmm. - Is there a lot of NVIDIA teams that's local to Taiwan? - A thousand. - A thousand. - Yeah. - Supply chain. A lot of systems engineering. - All three women. - Operations engineering. Mm-hmm. - Did you try this one? - Or fab. - You're gonna like it. It's really a mild flavor. - And fab engineers. - It's good. - Packaging engineers, test engineers. - So all those super legit hardware folks.

- Yeah. They, we're gonna build a building just like the building you were in. - Mm-hmm. - Almost a replica. - Mm-hmm. - We just have to settle down here. Get a piece of land. And, that building will hold 4,000 people. So we'll hire another 3,000 people. Wow. Brain freeze. - Yeah. - Given the heat outside, it's nice. - Mm-hmm. Oh, my goodness. - Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. - This one's a gift. - Oh, wow. - This is very good. - This is good. - Pineapple with guava. - You know it now with sugar rush. - No wonder they, no wonder they gift-wrapped this to us. - They wanted you to try something new. They're sampling. Expand the market. It's tasty. - I think- - Get a photo that goes all over social media. Yeah. - Let's go. - Good stuff here, guys.

- Thank you. - Sorry, guys. One more, one more. - This is the famous oyster pancake. - Thank you. Oh. - Crazy good, right? - So good. - Yeah. - Get it all in there. - Did you oyster, did you do oyster? - Yeah. - Okay. Wow. This is the reason I came here. Wow. - It's amazing. - I'll go in for seconds. Oyster. Famous Taiwanese oyster pancake.

- Amazing. - That oyster pancake was- - Oh, yeah, yeah. Perfect finish. - ... wow. - Perfect. - Wow. - That's the reason it's famous. - My mom and dad loved that, and we would come to the night market. And that's kinda, you know, when we go out to dinner, that's the definition of go out to... You don't go to a restaurant. You know, we didn't have money like that. And so we'd just go to night market, and you sit at these tables. And I was looking for a restroom, so I wandered off, and I walked up to this guy, this cook, and I was about to ask him, you know, if there was a restroom somewhere. And he was cleaning his knife, and my face was right next to his knife. Cut me right through, right across my face. I was five. I was almost five. So my dad picked me up, ran me to the hospital. Always loved the night market after that. I always had a fond memory.

- Yeah, sometimes the pain solidifies the happiness, right? - Yeah. It was, you know, it was the reason why I went. The food was so good. I love the place. - You still feel like that kid- - Yeah. - ... to some degree? - Yeah. I mean, you could... You know, I loved everything. I loved all the people. Everybody's working hard for a living, and they're working so hard, and they still wanna share a little something with you, you know? - Mm-hmm. - They don't have that much money. Their profit margin on that thing must be a dime each, you know? - Right. - They gave me all their profit, right? - Right. - You know, just to be kind. It's the Taiwanese way, and it's nice to watch, you know, these people, their craft. - Mm-hmm, and many of them have been doing it for years. - Yeah. - That same... I mean, you know, there's a famous documentary, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, but there's a bunch of Jiros over there.

- Exactly. - They've been doing the same meal in that night market. - Dang, that pork sausage was so good. That was so good. And that bun was good. - Yeah, the bun was good. - The fried potato balls. - Mm-hmm. Amazing. I don't know how they do it. - Oh, and that fluffy- - Yeah. - ... rice cake- ... with the brown sugar on top. - That somebody just handed to you- - Exactly. - ... and turned out to be magic. - And that noodle. - Oh, yeah. The noodle. - Oh, come on. That noodle. The hot sauce. - Uh-huh. - That ball, that white ball. - Mm-hmm. - It's a little bit of a fish cake on the outside, and it's pork on the inside. Man, oh, man. - Yeah, the layers. You're right. It's a little bit of fish cake. - Yeah, that gives it that little QQ. - Yeah. - We ate, like, 10 things. That noodle was good. That was my first time with that noodle. Wow. - Mm-hmm. - Dang. Did you go to Shanghai? - Yeah, for some of the MiniMax, some of the AI companies that- - Okay, yeah. Boy, those companies are good.

- And then went to Hangzhou for Unitree, and those... The robotics folks, full of humility. There's a lot of robotics companies, and you know what all the AI companies are saying? They're compute starved. - Yeah. - More compute. - Yeah, but somehow, somehow, you know, while they're compute starved, it forces them to come up with these- - Yeah, exactly. - ... incredible architectures that are so efficient. - Yeah. Yeah, constraints is the kinda mother of invention. - Right. - Scarcity. - Yeah. And they're severely, severely constrained, and they're... Still, they're getting funded. They're still... Right? - Mm-hmm. Yeah. Any IPOs? - Yeah. Just getting it done. Like a son of a gun. - All right, Jensen. Thank you for an experience of a lifetime. That was delicious. Thank you. - Thank you. That was fun. That was incredible. - Thank you. That was awesome. - All right, we got the data model. - Let's get ready! - Still going.

- It's become world-class. - Taiwan, number one whiskey. - Yeah. - Go on. - Kavalan. It's good. Welcome to Taiwan. - Welcome to Taiwan. - This is... Here, turn... Yeah, turn around. Turn around. Let's go around here. This is Taiwan. This is Taiwan. - That's the stage on which Jensen promised me personally he will dance on tonight. - We are dancing. A couple more bottles of whiskey- - We are- - ... we are dancing. - So we're actually at the NVIDIA employee gathering, and it's just... It's incredible how many people, how many people are here, many of them traveling from across the world, but- - And this is a traditional five-star prepared table. It's basically a feast. - Look at this. The party's already started. But cheers, my friend, and thank you for everything, Jensen. Thank you for meeting me here. - I want you to enjoy the Taiwanese hospitality.

- Jensen is literally feeding the press. - Okay? So whatever you guys need, just speak up. Whatever you need, tell me, okay. - Okay. Okay. - Just handing out food to the press. It's awesome. It's hot out here. It's dinner time. - It's a show. - They're working around the clock. - They need love, too. - Yeah, Lex Fridman. - Oh. - Lex Fridman. - Woo! - You just met the GOAT. The OG. Lex Fridman. - Look at that. Such a sweetheart. Cheers. What people need to realize, all that cheer is after many, many hours of doing another booth tour today. - Did you see what happened today? - I heard- - There were like- - ... it had gotten nuts - ... several thousand people were lined up. I came around the corner, I looked down, and my mind just went, "I have no idea what to do."

I have no idea what to do. It blew my mind. And they were all screaming and cheering, and- - It's all love - ... oh, man. It's incredible. Their capacity, their capacity for generosity and kindness and be helpful to other people, it is the reason why this island, all these companies here, are at the center of the ecosystem. It's because of that fundamental generosity and the capacity to help other people. It's the reason why they're the supply chain for the world. It comes from that. - Willingness to work very hard. - Super hard. Super hard. - Just the combination of the two. - Super hard. - Lex, I don't know what's going on here, but there's air conditioning. - This spot in Taiwan- - This exactly - ... there is air conditioning. - There's a specific spot in this place and time. - Right here. Right here. - The universe just says you need a little break. How long you been working at NVIDIA? - 17 years. - 17 years. There we go. Look at this. He's taking selfies.

- Yeah, that's right. - Something is happening right here. This, all of Taiwan, is hype- - It's true - ... for right here - It's right here. This is true. This is nice and cool in here. - Oh, yeah, there's air movement right there. - Is that- - It's the cool air from there. - Oh, from the refrigerator. - Just because of that? - Yeah. - This is literally the air conditioner. - It's a refrigerator. Was that good? - Mm-hmm. - The, the- - The sauce makes it, with a bit of pepper on top. Amazing. Hey, thank you. Thank you. Have fun.

I love you guys. Thank you very much. - Love you, Jen. - So when we were dating in college, uh, I had no money. No, because my parents didn't give us allowance. Because, you know, when I was raised, I was raised like a Taiwanese kid. There's no allowance. If you need money, if you're dying, call home. Is that right? Yeah. And if you're not calling home, they're not gonna give you money. I realized right away that she had allowance. And so I started dating her. Oh! Woo! I started dating her for her money. Oh! 25 cents a week- ... so we could play video games. - Well, hey there. Sorry for the quick interruption. I'm out here in nature, not AI generated, but I'll tell you what is, the videos and stories in video form that Higgsfield does.

Human in the loop is important there, but AI does a lot of incredible work. Jensen and I talked a lot about how much we love video games, so asked Higgsfield to generate a quick video showing the history of video games, and the challenge is to see if I can identify all of them. Start, play. That's Pong in the Matrix. Uh, Mario with alcohol. Uh, Street Fighter. Uh, uh, Dark Souls. Heh, maybe my favorite. Uh, Arena, Daggerfall, Skyrim, the Elder Scrolls world. When is Elder Scrolls VI coming out? That was a... I think I saw a little bit of SimCity, and T- I mean, that's Grand Theft Auto. Speaking of which, when is Grand Theft Auto VI coming out? For that one, we know the answer: November something, 19th. Anyway, thank you to the people who create incredible video games. Some of the happiest hours, many hours of my life have been playing video games, and I've done a bunch of interviews. Dan Houser, Jeffrey Kaplan, Todd Howard, Carmack. The list goes on and on. I'll have many more. Anyway, this is me procrastinating while I should be running, so back to the video.

- You don't mind my parents coming, right? - No. - They, they- - This is great. - ... just love this place so much. - So we're having some braised pig's feet. - Hello, everyone. - Hello. Hello, hello. This is so great. You mind if I sit with you? - Yeah, sit. Good to see you. - Nice to see you too. - Have you had pig's feet before? - Yeah. - I'm guessing it's a bit of an acquired taste. - Actually, I taste fine. It's just you acquired it now. - Look. - Eggs and tofu. - And asparagus. - Get ready to eat this. This is so good.

- This is another one of my favorites. - So this is pork, this is tofu, eggs- - Yep. - ... and that's the pig's feet. - Pig's feet. Wow. Awesome. - It sounds iffy, but it tastes really good. - It is so good. - My favorite is when Judson becomes cameraman. - Yeah. - He knows how to multitask. - Got it. Almost missed it. - You got it. You got it. Teamwork. - Yeah. - She's going in. - That's the toe right there. - I think it's a branding issue. It's all about the name. It probably took years for people to learn how to spell NVIDIA correctly. - Mostly they spell it NVIDIA. - No IDIA. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Look at that toe. Look at that toe. That's a good toe. - Does America do Taiwanese food good or no? - No, but it's starting to do better. - What's that going? - Everything.

- Flex. - Flex. It's good to see you. - Good to meet you. We didn't get a chance to chat. - My little brother. - Tell everybody about Jensen who uses Perplexity. - Yeah. Jensen and I are just chatting how when he's learning about new things, maybe learning about new companies, he uses Perplexity Computer. - Yeah. I do. I love Perplexity Computer. - Okay. Awesome. Beatles in the '60s. - Thank you. - Through all of that, maintaining humility. What a life, Jensen. Does that weight ever get heavy, that you have this responsibility, millions of people looking up to you? - I... It doesn't, you know, because I, I don't take it, I don't take it like that. You know, people have always been nice to me. I was- - Even when you had nothing. - Yeah. And I was always nice to other people. - Yeah. - You know, and I was always polite, and I always wanted people to succeed.

I wanted them to be happy. When I was going through school, I was always hoping that all the other kids would do well in school. - Mm-hmm. - And I was, I was happy to share my homework with everybody. I like seeing other people succeed, even my colleagues in other companies. - It's a funny thing how the world works. If you just celebrate others and you want them to succeed, somehow you succeed more. - Like, for example, 43,000 employees at NVIDIA wants me to succeed, literally. You know what I'm saying? - And you want each of them to succeed. - Exactly. - And you want... I mean, I've seen you. You want people at other companies to succeed. - And they want me to succeed. - So... Mm-hmm. And that, there's a ripple effect to the whole thing. - Yeah. Exactly. There's a- You know, goodwill is not a zero-sum game. It's not limited by physics. - Can you think through, talk through your export controls view? You've been- had strong opinions that export controls is not the way America should win.

- Mm-hmm. - Can you steelman the case for that and against it? - The case against it is simple. If there's something that is valuable, something that's useful, something that is a force multiplier. So for example, rare earth is a force multiplier. Computer technology is a force multiplier. Um, you know, technology in general is a force multiplier. You could argue that knowledge is a force multiplier. - Mm-hmm. - Uh, intellectual property is a force multiplier. And so, if we have assets like that, then depriving other people of it, um, enhances our position, deprives them of theirs. And- - It's a way to gain a competitive edge- - Yeah - ... is by hoarding that particular resource. - Right. Keep it out of the hands of others. And that's, that's not completely untrue, with respect to, uh, the physical things. Like for example, it is not untrue with respect to, refined rare earth. It's not untrue when it relates to bullets, bombs. Um, I think that's generally not untrue to the extent that the, the opposition can't, and other parties can't therefore create their own, is generally not untrue. The other side of the argument is that if our goal is to optimize for long-term national security, long-term,

long-term domestic tranquility and harmony, then prosperity is the best way to do that. The safest countries in the world are the richest countries. The reason why United States is so powerful militarily is because we have extraordinary wealth, and that extraordinary wealth came along with extraordinary technology, and that technology and wealth becomes a flywheel, and that flywheel is ultimately what you're optimizing for. So the question is, are you optimizing for someone else not having access to this technology, or are you optimizing for a flywheel? - Mm-hmm. - And I suggest that a more sophisticated long-term strategy is to optimize for a flywheel. And in order to optimize for that flywheel, you have to have both simultaneously technology leadership and wealth. That flywheel is really important. This is no different than, you know, a lot of computing technologies and platform technologies. The, the concept of wealth is basically customer engagements and installed base, and that installed base and customer usage drives more consumption of your technology, which then drives more wealth, which allows you to scale your technology faster than anyone. And so, this concept of flywheel, which comes along with technology leadership, economic leadership, which fuels technology leadership, which drives more economic

leadership, and that flywheel is what causes companies and countries to stay ahead. And so my... I would suggest that instead of finite things that are concrete and has no, no positive feedback system that creates, uh, I would advocate that the better strategy is to be quite extremely selective, extremely selective about access to, certain technologies. But aside from that, balance that with optimizing for that technology- ... and economic flywheel. - I think- - So there's a balance - ... I think the question is, does America flourish if that flywheel includes China or doesn't include China? That's the open question for America and the open question for humanity. There's a line that's crossed when two nations are competing as- You can even say geopolitically friends competing versus becoming enemies competing. And there's a line, and once you cross that line, you, I think, have the potential to destroy everybody's flywheel.

- That's right. I would say that we should do everything we can to avoid conflict. We should compete. That we can't do without. And... But we should do everything we can to avoid conflict. And, and so the question is, is therefore if you have relationships that are competitive, there are strategies that cause that relationship to lead towards conflict, and there are strategies to avoid conflict. - I think that to the degree there's interdependence is something you and I talked about amongst, let's say, AI stacks. Everybody's using the same hardware. Everyone's using the same software. Everybody's going to each other's universities. There's friendships. There's scientific collaborations. There's friendly competition amongst different companies, but nevertheless, it's, it really fundamentally is collaboration. The more of that we have, the harder it is to actually divide the two different peoples in order to then have a, something like a global conflict.

- The harder it is to decouple, the harder it is to have conflict, and I agree with that. Now, one of the things that, that is helpful, and just now the way you described it is absolutely right. In fact, AI is not a model. AI is a whole stack of technologies, and they're all contributing to AI. You can't have AI without energy. - Mm-hmm. - And, and we know that, certain countries and certain regions have extraordinary leadership and capabilities in energy while others don't. And so if you keep going up and down that stack, you'll notice, you observe that depending on where you're talking about leadership is happening in different places. - Jensen and I, as proud Americans, I personally believe that America has the most innovative people, like the craziest, wildest, out there, big, big moonshot ideas. I think America's at the top of the world in doing that.

So as you find- - Well, NVIDIA's an American company. - Yeah. - Uh, Anthropic, OpenAI, you know, Google. There, there are just so many, so much overwhelming evidence that what you're saying is absolutely right. The compounded chemistry that leads to this innovation capability over time- - Mm-hmm. - ... is overwhelming. One of the, one of the overwhelming advantages that we have is that our flywheel is also the best. And the reason for that is because the vast majority of the world responds to English. And so if you're an American company and you build on an American tech stack using American standards, you're fairly deployable throughout the world. - Mm-hmm. - That's not true with China. And so we have a global flywheel advantage. Technology without customers is useless. - Yeah. You have to use that advantage. You don't take for granted your advantage. There is a global power to English as a language. It's just the way that America is able to create an ecosystem that's used by everybody. That's a real, real advantage. So closing yourself off from the rest of the world for sort of the benefits you do get from isolationism, there's a real cost to that.

- Exactly. - You lose that advantage. - Exactly. Which is exactly the reason why I believe that on the one hand, we want to keep great technology to ourselves. On the other hand, we need that flywheel. We need exactly the sentence that you applied just now, every single word of it. And so we want to have as much platform reach as possible because it generates that flywheel, which generates the wealth, which generates our R&D capacity to continue to innovate. - Mm-hmm. - Now, that flywheel is also really delicate. You could see flywheels, once it gets going, it becomes, you know, a bit of an exponential. And platform quickly seems like overnight after being built for a decade, two decades, in our case, three decades, all of a sudden it reaches a tipping point and it's everywhere. - Mm-hmm. - On the other hand, that flywheel can stop and it could, you know, it could slow down very quickly. And so I... The question about export controls is just this balance.

And every country deserves, every country has the right for the technologies that the capabilities or the asset, the resources that they've created for, you know, as part of their national advantage, they have the right to decide how they want to use it. And I, and, and that's a, that's a sovereign right. That's a national right. On the other hand, we also want to make sure that the national treasure of the United States, which the technology industry is part of, that national treasure has the largest possible flywheel, the largest possible platform reach so that we can sustain that, you know, that economic and technology leadership flywheel. So that's the balance. - And at the end of the day, as we've been sharing a lot of food, I think we have to remember that all the humans all across the world, we have a lot more in common than we have that's different. And it's good to understand each other, to collaborate, to be friends with each other, to work together and compete as friends versus, dividing each other and making enemies of each other. - And when you travel, you really get hit with that.

- Especially when you hitchhike. - Especially when you hitchhike. You realize that so much. Yeah. - Jensen, thank you so much for the delicious food. This is amazing. - How fun was that? - That was fun. - How fun was that? - And maybe some night market tonight as well. - Oh, o- - Can't wait - ... okay. I'm gonna take you to a different one. - Yeah. - I'll take you to a d- - Even crazier. - Yeah. This is g- - Even crazier. - It's gonna be incredible. - Okay. Yeah, what you doing with Lex? - Oh, God. - Good to see you. Hey, Mark. Good to see you. - Good to see you. - Come on, Christian. Let's go. - Not even rain can stop Jensen. - Where did you grow up? - Taiwan. - We both grew up in Taiwan. Let's go. Come on. - Hi, Christian. - Excuse me. I'm Lex. - Hi, Christian. - Good to meet you. Yeah. - Come on. We'll just go wander around. Lex was- - Oh, yeah. It was nuts. - ... overwhelmed. - It was nuts. Morris, the founder of TSMC. - Okay. - Jensen. - That's awesome. - Have you guys been to this place? - No. - This is, you know, generally believed to be the best one. So you just wanted to make it clear to me that I've never had this.

- Maybe. The spicy one as well. - Tell me that chicken is not so tender. - This chicken is really good. - Amazing. - This is the essential... Okay, okay. I'm no longer just tasting. This is... Oh, my God. - No, no, no. You're still tasting. - You're still tasting. - Incredible. With a... Almost like a barbecue smoky sauce. They know what they're doing with the omelet. Like, the way the eggs are used in the various dishes is amazing. - In Southeast Asia, in Southeast Asia, there's egg in everything. It is just the cheapest source of protein. They add egg to everything. Egg to pancake. - Jensen. - Egg to oyster. Yeah? - I heard you make amazing fried rice. - I do. - Mm-hmm. - I watch videos on AI and fried rice. - It's absolutely true. That's his whole algorithm. He's working and I hear the - I have AI. I have fried rice. I got geopolitics. I have dogs.

- Yeah. - And panda bears. - Otters. - Somehow- - Otters. - Otters. - Oh, I call other otters. - So I watch some geopolitics. - Mm-hmm. - And then I gotta go directly to pandas and otters. Just to recover. - Yeah. Oh, this is- - Sorry. Keep going. - I think that's a statement of like, "You need help, my friend." It's okay. It's okay. Poor soul. - You don't have something like that in San Francisco. I grew up on that. This, my mom made this, like, practically every week. - This is very nice. - Yeah. How good is that? - Amazing. - It's gotta be fresh ginger. - Mm-hmm. Fresh with some ginger in it. - Yeah. It's so good, right? - Oh, wow. Okay. - It's a whole vibe. Asian food is all about the soup. Women were going, "Lex, Lex, Lex." Basically the world's restaurant.

- Mm-hmm. - First of all- - It worked well. - ... there is no no. You know, you say no to everything. - Yeah. - The apps are coming. - Mm-hmm. - If you say three, then it's four. - It's four. - Yeah. - If we ate everything, I mean, they'd feel bad. They're gonna have to bring more stuff. - Yeah. It's not a winnable game. - No. Depending on the culture, depending on the culture, if you don't eat everything, it's rude. - Mm-hmm. - And in some cultures, if you eat everything, it's rude. So you're either competing for their generosity or competing for your appreciation for their food. And they're both important, but depending on culture, one's more important than the other. So in this culture, their generosity is more important than your appreciation for the food. - Yeah. - Mm-hmm. That's a kind of optimization problem. - It's... Yeah. So you just gotta know which country you're in. - You gotta figure out the objective function based on country. - That's right. - Conditional country. - No. We gotta figure out which country... I bet in France you gotta eat everything, so we'd be here all night.

- Right. - That's why the dinners are three hours. - Yeah, we gotta pound it down. - They're forever. - Yeah, yeah. - Even with the rain. - Do we still have Lex? - Yeah, right here. - You guys should keep him on a running leash. - Delicious. Probably the most- - We don't wanna, didn't lose the white guy. - I think I'm famous for being the white guy here. - Nobody is- - The so- - ... loving Taiwan more than Lex. - Yeah, exactly. I'm in love. - Yeah, we love Lex too. - Come on, Lex. - Okay, let's go. - I got the whole... - Here we go. There we go. - Hello. Hey. Hello. - I'll take two. Is two okay? - Sure, two. This is egg crepe with sausage. - What are we looking at here? - Imagine a corn dog, but Taiwanese style. - It's all about the eggs. - Look at this. It's a corn dog, essentially.

- There we go. - A universal, it's a universal concept. You got a hot dog, you got a corn dog. - You can't AI generate this. Nice. - This one's the best. - How much is this one? - This one's 80. - Only 80? - Yes, 80. - Okay. This looks incredible. - Oh, this makes no sense. - Amazing. - We're gonna put ice cream- - Yeah. - ... that's rice paper, and cilantro. Where does the cilantro make sense? - And you're saying somehow this is gonna taste good, you're saying? - Incredible. - It smells good. It smells really good. Whatever that is, it smells really good. - First time in Taiwan. - Wow. - Texas to Taiwan. - Yeah. A little different. - Different planets, Lex. I think we're all in Jensen's simulation. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah, yeah. I don't think we're the main players in this one. Just be your best NPC right now.

- The beauty sphere. Yeah, yeah, yeah. - That's what... I was like, "What would an NPC do?" That's what I've been doing. All right, let's try this thing. - Is it good? - It's so good. - He's right. It doesn't make any sense. It's ice cream, cilantro, nuts. It's soft and chewy. - Great job, Lex. - Thank you. I really appreciate it. It's delicious. I don't think I've ever had an ice cream in a tortilla- - Madness. - ... with a vegetable, but it's delicious. Makes no sense, but it's delicious. I think we're no longer sampling. I think we're eating at this point. - I know. - Doesn't make any sense. - But the ice cream is very needed. - Yeah, it is. It's really refreshing. - Yeah, we're gonna go get some- - Mangoes. - ... green mangoes. Lex, green mangoes.

- We must. - Okay? Green mangoes. - I didn't even know that was a thing. - Green mangoes, and it's not that it's unripe. It's ripe. - Yeah. - It's just green. - Okay. - It's like an apple- - Uh-huh. - ... and a pear and a mango- ... giving birth to a green mango. - This island makes semiconductors and fruit. - And fruit. Hey, where's my sausage? This, you guys, this is way too good. Just gotta take a bite. - This doesn't count. It's not... We're not having... We're not eating. We're just sampling. - This is about sampling. That is insanely good right here. - These are taro balls. - That is insanely good. And you know what? We, I grew up eating pork floss. - Mm-hmm. - Oh, it's so good on rice. - Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It makes- - Yeah, it looks similar to that. - ... its marketing is a issue. - Yeah. - In whatever- - Naming is an area. - Naming is the issue. - Yeah, yeah. Taiwan's not very good at marketing.

Pork floss. - I know. - Pork floss. - Or, or bubble gum in America. - Yeah. - I just eat it with- You just eat it with... - Wow. - Look at that. - Gorgeous. - It's onion pancakes. Onion pancakes, and it's mostly oil. That is, that is the number one ingredient. - Yeah, 90% oil- - 90%... - ... 10% egg. - Look at that. Oh. - She knows what she's doing. Yeah, yeah. - Probably been making this for years. - There goes your diet, guys. I did gain probably 10 pounds already on this trip. - Just on this trip. Yeah, yeah. - Lex is so... He really does. He's disciplined. He tastes. - Yeah. - I save. Let's just taste, don't eat. - Yeah, yeah. - But I eat. - We ate some delicious pig's feet. - Oh, yum. - Again, branding issue. The name doesn't sound good- ... but it was delicious. Of course- - I only mean it. - ... OpenAI is known for naming everything so clearly- ... and perfectly.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Làjiāo biǎoqiàn. - Just throw some random numbers on it. And people will figure it out. - As long as the numbers go up, it's all better. - Yeah, just go up. Numbers go up. - The perfect combination. - Look at that. No, it looks delicious. - Wow. Wow. - Is this one good? - Good. - And this one? - Good. - Okay. Oh, - Yeah. He's basically put everything on it. - I put everything on it. - One of the... These are the sesame balls. - Oh, they're so good. - He put everything on it. - I made this. - Wow. That's a everything ball right there. - All right, this is the sesame ball. - The tofu underneath, you see this? - So it's really chewy on the outside, almost doughy on the outside. - This right here- - With sesame type things in these. What? - Tofu. - Yeah. - This- - Oh, interesting. - ... this is the jam. - It's so windy. You gotta try each of these. So this is a qingcao and this is a cai.

They're like, um- - And this is qingcao. - Grass jelly. - Now, people think- - Good naming. - ... people think that you make the grass jelly. You squeeze it out of the plant and it is there. - Is that real? - It's real. - Okay. - Grass jelly is not made. - It's not too sweet. - Yeah, yeah. - Really nice jello. - Did you say not too sweet? Not too sweet. - Not too sweet. - It's the ultimate compliment. - All right, let's try this tofu one. This apparently is tofu. - Tofu. It's a drink. - Mm-hmm. - It's milk in the morning. - Mm-hmm. - You could fry it. You could braise it. - Mm-hmm. - You could boil it. - This is really good. - This is like bubble gum shrimp. - Mm-hmm. Mm. What's the yellow thing? - It's a- - Do we know? - It's like a yam- Yeah ... thing, and that's taro. - And again, this doughy, chewy thing on the outside. This is incredible. - Part of it, part of it is, of course, for the taste. Part of it is for the texture.

- Mm-hmm. - And one of the important textures is QQ, a phrase for the texture of something bouncy. Like, for example- - Like the sesame balls. - ... like this. It's a little QQ. Udon noodle, QQ. - Mm-hmm. - Chewy texture. - Needs to have some elasticity. - Mm-hmm. Like, the noodles that have some, some of that chewiness are the best noodles. - QQ? - And you say QQ. - QQ. Okay. So that's a compliment for a noodle. - QQ. - Oh, yeah. - QQ. - Yeah. - They brushed with a little hot sauce. - Oh, yeah. It's nice. That's why I like it so much. That's why it is so good. I'm not gonna finish it. - What the hell? Gosh, this- - No, I'm not gonna eat it. I'm not gonna- - No, yeah, yeah. - It's good, right? - If you don't finish it, it doesn't really count. - Wow. Lex? - Yes. - Where's Mark? Oh, hey. - Back up, guys. Away from the front of the car.

- No problem. No problem. Thank you. No problem. - So good. Oh. The powder. Sweet and sour together with the pear. Sweet and sour powder. Oh, incredible. - Have you had the red one? - Mm-mm, not yet. - I'll get it going. - Not yet, not yet, not yet. Thank you. Thank you. Mm, mm, mm, mm, mm. - Good? - The powder. - It's so good. - This is amazing. - Oh, you should eat this.

- Mm-hmm. - Oh. - What is it? - We have a... - Yeah. - What is it? What is it? - Durian. - New York- - Durian. Durian. Durian. Yeah, that's my favorite. I love durian. - I mean, dur- ma- - You'll love it and you'll hate it. - Okay. Thank you, thank you. Durian. - Durian. They remade durian. It's an acquired taste apparently. Mm. It smells. It's sweet, but it's... It's actually quite good, but it smells. It smells really bad- - I know. It's grotesque. - ... but it tastes really good. - It's... Well, exactly. - Yeah. - It smells grotesque. - Mm. Okay. I get it. I get it. But it tastes really good- - Yeah. - ... which is fascinating. I don't know. My brain can't make sense of it, 'cause it tastes really good.

- Yeah. Whatever is that- - But it smells really bad. Nature played a little trick. Plums? Oh, this is gonna be very good. Oh, boy. Really nice plum. It's a plum. It's, like, a small plum, I think. That's incredible. Thank you. When did your relationship with Morris start, when you came back to Taiwan? - Yeah, so we were looking for a foundry. And at the time, the foundry industry was really... - We're, by the way, having Taiwanese breakfast. - Breakfast. - Early morning. - Cheers. And so, so we were looking for a foundry. Back then, everybody wanted a foundry.

Um, NEC, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard. Uh, because the PC revolution had started. So Windows 95 had just come out. Line, remember, lines were wrapped around the block, people waiting to buy a box, the operating system. - Yeah, that moment on stage in the keynote when you're looking back at Windows 95. - That was the moment I- - Just the years just all flew by. Just all the memories just flew by. - Yeah. - Thank you. - Try that. - What is it? - Cold soy bean milk. Because most Asians are lactose intolerant. - How are you liking your breakfast? - It's worth it 1,000%. This is cold soy milk. - All right, so this is the salty version. - Uh-huh. - Now, this is in here. Okay? - This is the sweet version, this is the salty version. - Hot salty version. Can we have some more spoons? Sure this one, but Lex...

- So you said, yeah, you were looking for a foundry. Just telling the story of how you first returned back to Taiwan- - I see, I see. - ... and built the relation with TSMC. You know, Windows 95. - This is too important. This is too important to me. - TSMC or that? - No, I can't talk. - Okay, yeah. - This- - Priorities in life. - Lex, I will share this with you in a second, but this is too important to me. - There we go. - Oh, this is my favorite. - Oh, okay. Do they make soup like that? No? - It's just, you know, another version. It's rice. - That is so good. - Stupid good, right? - So this is, I think, tofu, of course with an amazing broth.

- And a fried donut. - Fried donut. - Yeah, that's a donut. - A fried donut. Look at that. Yes. - Okay. - History. - Wow. Pork floss, your favorite. Rice, pork floss- - Uh-huh. - ... pickled vegetables, salty, and of course you need eggs. - Cheers. - Cheers. - Thank you. - Cheers. - Showing you guys the ropes. - Yeah, yeah. - Right? - No way. - I know. - It's pork floss. - Pork floss with egg, wrapped in a- I mean, sticky rice, essentially. - Marketing at its best. - Really good. - Floss. What is that? Pork floss. Right? - I don't think I've... This is one of the best things I've ever had, the cha mu. This is incredible. - Oh, yeah. Thank you. Jim. Here we go.

- What does this classify as? - A donut. - So this is a donut. - Deep fried- - Hawaiian donut. - ... deep fried donut. - Dip it in the broth. - And don- not too many... Remember, it's not gonna help you if you... When the hot soy comes, that's what you really dip it in. - It's nice and airy, fluffy, but crunchy on the outside. They know what they're doing. - Wow. Oh, my God. - What's in there? Tofu, egg. Well, we'll find out. - Add a little sesame. - And there's sesame outside. - Do you like it? - Look at that diamond ring. Good God. Beautiful. Oh, he's good. Isn't it? Oh, boy.

- Okay. - The sesame adds, right? - Yeah, mm-hmm. - Usually when you guys see sesame seeds, I think it's just sprinkling for- - Yeah. - ... look good. This adds. I think it's the smell. - Uh-huh. That's right. That's right. - Mm-hmm. Mm. - It's almost like a smokiness to it or something. - Yeah. This is steamed buns. Okay? There's a little something on the inside. - Super soft on the outside. - That's so good. - I know. - And so you guys must have met a long time ago. Went to the same group. Yeah. Yeah. It's a long time. I know. - Our school was inside the China Mall, so all... We were surrounded by everyone in the Chinese school growing up.

- So that's- - This is turnip cake. - Turnip cake? - Turnip cake. - Turnip, turnip. Yeah, turnip. - Yeah. - Yeah, it's great. It's actually really good. Again, a branding issue- - Yeah. - ... but you're gonna love it. - How's the garlic that- - Very garlicky, but it is incredibly delicious. You can do it. If you... Yeah. - I... - Lori's not a garlic person. That garlic sauce, you guys, guys, if you guys are okay with garlic, this is so good. - It's great. It's so good. The bottom. Right now that my mouth is on fire, having that heat is gonna really help. And that's sarcastically, 'cause- Mm-hmm. - Nice, right? - Yeah. - Pure. This shop is good.

- The heat is brilliant on this. - Yeah. - Oh. Ooh. Well, it has a... The way they cooked it, it has a, almost like a potato- - Mm-hmm. In 1996, PC revolution's just taken off. The industry, the PC chipsets- - Yeah. - ... the chipset industry name came out during that time. The fabless semiconductor industry was born. Cirrus Logic was the giant, S3, big small... Weitek, the small one. Western Digital used to make graphics chips. - Uh-huh. - I competed with all kinds of people. All the foundries was super... - They're not playing around. - I'm telling you the story later. - No, you just continue.

- This is- - It's just- - We're in a battlefield right now in this. We're in here. - There you go. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. - So I'm kind of really- - Yeah, this is a good one. This is a good one. - Yeah. - That's a pretty good one. - Yeah. And even by this standard, excuse me, this, by this dish standard. - Oh, okay. - My God, it's 90. - I know, I know, right? - All right. - You guys came back in '96. - That's right. - All right. Let's try this. - That's really good. Basic, but extremely good. Well done. Can you reach? - All right. Got... That's right. There you go. That's the next part. - Yeah. Yeah, there you go. Back up. - So the challenge is picking it up- - Yeah. - ... without breaking it. - Yeah, that's what... And I failed that miserably. Oh, that's perfection right there. - So there's a soup dumpling. - Uh-huh. - There's soup inside.

- Uh-huh. - And of course, everybody's trying to figure out, how did you insert soup inside? Just start off- - It's a great mystery. Yeah, but how does it not spill out? I mean, I guess they know what they're doing. - Well, they did a good job what they're doing, yeah. - I think in the last 20 minutes we've gotten through one year. Windows 95 got released. - But we had 14 dishes I think. - Yeah. We did good. We did good. - So the foundries, Japan got into the foundry business. Almost everybody and in the United States there were very few foundries because Intel was really focused on building their own products. AMD was building their own products, TI building their own products, and so the foundries, the other countries, the other chip companies from other countries got into the foundry business to try to serve this chipset industry. SGS-Thomson was a foundry. We went to SGS-Thomson first, and they weren't willing to take our business.

At the time, there was so little foundry capacity, if you wanted to, if you wanted to use somebody's foundry, you had to license your technology to them. - Mm-hmm. - That was one of the, one of the, you know, requirements. And kind of reminds me of, of some of the, the early deals with, with AI companies. You want to access the capacity, you have to license something away. - Mm-hmm. - You know? And so back in my generation, we had to license our IP to foundries. Well, TSMC, I heard about this company in Taiwan, TSMC, and UMC at the time. - Mm-hmm. - And you know, they had no, no strings attached. And just, they were, of course, quite poor companies themselves. - Mm-hmm. - And they were barely making it. I think TSMC was probably about $300 million company at the time, $300 million. Sounded like $300 billion, not $300 million. And, and, um- - Wow. - ... tiny little company. And, and I heard about, about them and heard about Morris Chang. And so I try to call their US office. They had a, back in the old days, it was Yellow Pages.

I look it up, it's a TSMC. There's a number there, and I call their number, and it's a recording. You know? You, you're, what, what kind of company you called has a recording? They never- And I, so I left my name and my number and, you know, and said a few things about NVIDIA. You know, we're a new startup company building computer graphics chips, and- - You know, that voice message is probably worth, like, a lot now. - Exactly. - "Hi, my name is Jensen." - Exactly. - "We're a new startup." - Imagine if I have somebody calling me back, you know? And, and I called several times. Nobody called me. Nobody called me back. - Yeah. - And so I finally wrote a letter to Morris, and so I wrote a long letter and sent it to him. Didn't hear anything for a long time, and then one day it was kind of around maybe 6:00 or so, maybe 6:30 or so. This person calls and says, "Uh, this is Morris Chang from TSMC." - Wow.

- And meanwhile, everybody outside my office were playing video games. - Mm-hmm. - And they're all laughing and screaming, and you know, I think they were playing PlayStation, the first PlayStation at the time. Everybody's laughing and screaming. I said, "Hey, guys, shut up. It's Morris Chang." You know, called me back. And so I was so happy that a, that a founder would actually call us back, you know, because, hey, we're not- Maybe we won't have to die. - Yeah. Wow. - And, and so, and so we talked, and he invited me to Taiwan, and so I came back to Taiwan for the first time. - And that was your, that was your, after many years- - First journey back 30 years. - And that was the start of everything, not just that partnership, but just the whole industry really. - TSMC and UMC, their primary competitor, literally across the- across a street. - Mm-hmm. - One street. That street, you know, is a street inside a campus. And so it's like the other building. I visited, visited UMC and then I visited TSMC, in that order. Both companies super gracious, super happy that they were willing to talk to us.

And, and when I spoke to UMC, I, I, you know, people ask me, well, why did I ended up choosing TSMC instead of UMC? And the reason was because I like both companies equally. They're both excellent companies. But the thing that I really liked about TSMC was, was there were a lot of things that I said that Morris said, "We can't do that." - Mm-hmm. - And I'll say, "What about that?" "We can't do that." There's a lot of things that they, they just can't do. And so he had a philosophy about his business, and he had a, he had a, you know, he has a set of core values that he cares about. And he spent all of his time talking about corporate governance and, and uh, integrity and- - Mm-hmm. - ... You know, partnership and thinking long term. And, and not once did he talk about, you know, anything else. - Mm-hmm. - And so, and, and he said, he said one thing. He said, "Jensen, if we were to work together, I promise you we would jump through hoops for you."

And for the whole time, 30 years, they've been jumping through hoops for us. - Yeah. He kept his word. - The core values of that company's really, really strong. It was there from the very beginning. And you gotta go through thick and thins and, you know, there are a lot of un- unpredictable things in the future. And it's because you're building a chip together. It's a foundry. It's not exactly like buying something off the shelf. You're building a chip together, and it's really hard to build chips. And so, so it's impossible to know all the details. It's impossible to make all the decisions up front. You really are choosing not what to buy, but who to work with. - Mm-hmm. - And so I was smart about making that decision. It wasn't about what to buy. It's about who you're choosing to work with. - Mm-hmm. - And, and uh, that attitude, that philosophy about choosing who to work with has lasted for me to this day. - But also in the, in the technology industry, the remarkable thing is not just choosing who to work with- is choosing to work with them for decades.

- Yeah. - Like the loyalty of a relationship. - We've been working with TSMC now for 30 years. It's like, we understand. Okay. - Mm-hmm. - Let's go. That's it. For 30 years. And the reason that it's wisdom is because how do you capture in advance all the unknowns- - Right. - ... in a relationship? It's like, it's like ha- you know, it's like writing up a ironclad prenup or something, you know? The problem is, is the more specific you want it to become, the more brittle that relationship's gonna be. And so I had the wisdom of keeping it nice and loose, discover our way there, rough justice. We use this phrase rough justice. Sometimes they win, sometimes I win. - Mm-hmm. - We don't... Sometimes I like, like, you know, how things worked out better than they did. Sometimes they like it better than I did. Over the course of time it all works out. - Does that make sense to you why TSMC is as legendary as they are? - Yeah, absolutely.

- That's right. - Absolutely. - Good. - I think that the way I work with them, I don't know if everybody works with them that way. I wouldn't be surprised if many people do. But I prefer to work with people this way, which is, which is... A- and look at all the employees of the company. I don't have ironclad contracts with them. You know, we choose to work with each other. - Mm-hmm. - It's not always gonna be, you know, once... It's not always gonna be completely fair. Sometimes it's a little one-sided. But over the course of time, the rough justice works out, you know? - And it makes everybody work, like step up. When you, when you both choose- - Yeah - ... to work together, step up. - They need to know, they need to know that you want them to win. All my employees know I want them to win. TSMC knows I want them to win. Every single day TSMC knows I want them to win. You know? And so it comes through in our partnership, it comes through in our business dealings, it comes through in me always helping them be in a better company. And they're always doing the same for me. You're not buying something. You're deciding to build something together.

- Mm-hmm. - And our company's built on top of the TSMC platform. Our company's built on top of the Taiwan platform. And so these relationships matter. You know, you do something just because, you know, you got upset or you just wanna make everybody bid for your business or, you know, everybody, nobody makes any money but you. Those kind of... It is remembered on the island forever and everybody knows it. And so always leave something on the table. Always let them... You know, always be thinking about other people's sustainability and their success. Nothing gives me more pleasure than last year when my entire supply chain's stock price went up 300%, mine stayed flat. Now, the fact that that happened is not something that I'm happy about, but it's because our platform is so large everybody could rise up to meet it. And that's a good thing. - Yeah. Wanting your partners, friends to succeed long-term is gonna lead to your own success.

- Yeah. - 100%. That philosophy is really powerful. - It makes a lot of sense. It makes sense with family, it makes sense with your employees, why wouldn't it make sense with your partners? Right? It makes sense with your customers. - I just love that you're the foodie guide even for Morris in Taiwan. We're literally, this is an honor of a lifetime to be guided by the best food guide in the world. Engineering and food. There's literally nobody better than Jensen. - I'm just setting myself up for my own podcast. - Yeah, exactly. - Yeah, yeah. - Food blog. Post, we're saying post AGI. Here we go. - Come on. One more. - One more. - Plastic is- - They have to hide it under a blanket. - Oh. Man. - Now you know a true Asian. - Amazing. - Eating and being hungry are completely unrelated things. - All right. That's a wrap on one of the most incredible weeks of my life. So Jensen, thank you so much. Thank you so much for this.

- Yeah, this was so much fun. It's great hanging out with you and chatting with you. - And- - I could do this more. - ... this was incredible food. Now on to the next adventure. All right, that's a wrap on my time in Taiwan. It's been an incredible experience. Talking to hundreds of engineers, having all kinds of street food, hanging out with Jensen. I'm truly grateful to be alive. Grateful for all the support, grateful for the hugs and the kindness I got. The whole thing. Thank you for everything. I love you all.