By AJ Tiarsmith
Publication Date: 2026-10-31 12:04:00
Three engineers hatched a plan at a Denny’s booth in East San Jose, then watched their first product come back in nearly every box shipped. What kept the company alive long enough to become the most important chip business on…
Although Wall Street now values NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction) at $4.94 trillion, the company started with three engineers and a diner menu. Per NVIDIA’s own blog, in 1993 three friends, Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, met at Denny’s to talk about a chip that would bring realistic 3D graphics to personal computers. Speaking on Sequoia Capital’s Crucible Moments podcast, Huang placed the booth “right at the corner of Capitol and Berryessa, this place in East San Jose.” But within a few years, the startup that now anchors the technology-packed Nasdaq Composite was weeks from running out of cash.
A Birthday Start and a Chip That Came Back
On the same podcast, Huang said his first day of work was “February 17th, my birthday in 1993.” He added, “You know, I was 29, I had just turned 30.” The founders’ first product, the NV1, reached retailers and then came straight back. Huang described the damage on Sequoia’s podcast: “250,000 units went out. 250,000, well, 249,000 came back. And, practically put us out of business.” For a young chipmaker paying engineers out of venture money, a return rate like that could easily have ended the company before its second product shipped.
