Skip to navigationSkip to main contentSkip to right columnADVERTISEMENTAditi GangulyMon, July 13, 2026 at 10:45 PM GMT+2 10 min readjamesonwu1972 / Shutterstock.comMoneywise and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue through links in the content below.In 1997, with his company Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) mere weeks away from hitting insolvency, Jensen Huang ordered mass production of a graphics chip that had never physically existed — betting his company's last dollars on a design tested entirely inside a simulator.The chip was the RIVA 128 and Huang called that decision, made when Nvidia had "about six months of cash left," as the defining moment that saved the company.Must ReadHuang recalled the pivotal and harrowing events during an episode of the Acquired podcast (1), recorded at Nvidia's headquarters and published back in October 2023.At the time of that recording, Nvidia was worth about $1.1 trillion. Today, it's worth around $4.7 trillion (2), making it the most valuable public company on earth — a position it reached after becoming the first company ever to top a $5 trillion valuation (3) in October 2025.Considering Nvidia's wild success, it's easy to forget that it was all built on a gamble, or perhaps a wish and a prayer.The one-shot chipTo understand the risk, you have to understand what "taping out" a chip means.In semiconductor design, taping out is essentially the point of no return: It's the moment a company sends its finished blueprint to a factory to be manufactured, or "fabricated." Fixing a mistake after that means starting a fresh production run, which costs money and months most startups truly don't have.The normal process, Huang explained, is iterative: You build the chip, write the software, find and stamp out any bugs, then tape out a corrected version. Repeat as needed. But 30 years ago, Nvidia couldn't afford to repeat anything."If we only had six months and you get to tape out just one time, then obviously you're going to tape out a perfect chip," Huang said.Huang had a darkly hilarious answer when his engineers asked how he could possibly know the chip would be perfect: "I know it's going to be perfect because if it's not we'll be out of business. So let's make it perfect."Terms and Privacy PolicyEU DSA contactPrivacy & Cookie SettingsMore Info