From Chips to Crisis: How Intel Lost its Way While Nvidia Soared

The story of Intel and Nvidia is one of paths crossed and diverged, a parable of American innovation in the 21st century. In the late 1990s, Jensen Huang, a Taiwanese immigrant with a penchant for bold ideas, walked into Intel’s boardroom. Nvidia, the company he co-founded, had just launched its first graphics card. Huang pitched Intel’s executives on a partnership, even a potential acquisition. They demurred. GPUs, they concluded, were a niche product for gamers, not the stuff of strategic importance.

Fast forward to 2024, and Huang stands atop a $3.4 trillion empire, his company’s graphics processing units (GPUs) powering everything from cutting-edge artificial intelligence to high-frequency stock trading. Nvidia, at one point in 2024, became the most valuable company in the world, surpassing even the likes of Apple and Microsoft. Intel, by contrast, is in crisis. Its market value has plummeted to $104 billion, a shadow of its former self. Last month, its CEO, Pat Gelsinger, resigned under pressure, his grand five-year plan to revive the company derailed by a toxic cocktail of investor impatience, geopolitical turmoil, and technical stagnation.

The contrast between Intel and Nvidia couldn’t be starker. Nvidia is the darling of Silicon Valley, the embodiment of America’s capacity for reinvention. Intel, once…