Nvidia

It's time for The Indicator Quiz!

We test you, dear listener, on your knowledge of topics that we've covered on The Indicator!

Today's quiz focuses on our June episodes, in which we covered a lot of... well, a little bit of everything! NVIDIA, ChatGPT, and...Peppa Pig?

Play along with us and see how you do!

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At the core of most of the electronics we use today are some very tiny, very powerful chips. Semiconductor chips. And they are mighty: they help power our phones, laptops, and cars. They enable advances in healthcare, military systems, transportation, and clean energy. And they're also critical for artificial intelligence, providing the hardware needed to train complex machine learning.

On today's episode, we're bringing you two stories from our daily show The Indicator, diving into the two most important semiconductor chip companies, which have transformed the industry over the past 40 years.

First, we trace NVIDIA's journey from making niche graphics cards for gaming to making the most advanced chips in the world — and briefly becoming the world's biggest company. Next, we see how the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's decision to manufacture chips for its competition instead of itself flipped the entire industry on its head, and moved the vast majority of the world's advanced chip production to Taiwan.

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For a moment last week, semiconductor chip designer NVIDIA eclipsed Microsoft to become the world's most valuable company. How did it get there?

Today on the show, David Rosenthal, one half of the tech podcast Acquired, explains how NVIDIA's founder Jensen Huang laid the groundwork for the company's meteoric rise, and why there may be obstacles ahead.

Related episodes:
The life and death spirals of social media networks (Apple / Spotify)
The semiconductor founding father

For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

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