Shake It Off and Skate to the Next Opportunity

At Caltech in June 2024, Huang said “our robotics journey resulted from a series of setbacks.” He described Nvidia being pushed out of one market after another, ending with its exit from mobile when Qualcomm would not connect its modems to Nvidia’s chip; “with no more markets to turn to,” it chose robotics, a market with no customers. Only after that story did he add the line above about shaking off each setback. It is an easy line to say after the fact, so the record matters.

The setbacks, all sourced. NV1 in 1995. A 2008 defective laptop GPU charge (reported at roughly $150 to $200 million), followed in September 2008 by the elimination of about 360 positions, “approximately 6.5 percent” of the workforce, per Nvidia’s 8-K filing of 18 September 2008. The 2022 crypto bust, when Gaming revenue fell 33% year on year in Q2 of fiscal 2023 and inventory rose to $3.89 billion. The abandoned Arm deal, which carried a $1.36 billion charge. And DeepSeek day, 27 January 2025, when Nvidia reportedly lost about $589 billion of market value in a session.

The response. In the Q2 FY2023 results release, Huang said: “We are navigating our supply chain transitions in a challenging macro environment and we will get through this.” Short, unromantic, and followed by a pivot to the next architecture.

Doesn’t transfer without a balance sheet. Nvidia could skate on from a $1.36 billion write-off and a $589 billion paper loss because by then it had cash, a moat and patient shareholders. An early-stage company gets one or two setbacks of that size before the money runs out.