The founder of Nvidia who cashed out at a low price: lost $100 billion in blood, and donated all his family property

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2024-06-18 18:07Posted on the official account of Guangdong Xinxi

Xinxi reported on June 18 that as Nvidia's market value stood at the $3 trillion mark, founder and CEO Jensen Huang's worth also rose. According to Forbes real-time data, Huang now has a net worth of $113.4 billion, ranking 12th in the world.

Unlike Huang's high profile and glamorous, Nvidia's other two co-founders retired early. Among them, Curtis Priem, who was Nvidia's first CTO, sold all his Nvidia shares back in 2006.

If he hadn't sold his own Nvidia stock, he would now have more than $100 billion in assets. But Prim now lives a life of solitude, almost never appearing in public and not participating in any of Nvidia's affairs.

▲Curtis Prim (Source: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

Prim was actually an important founder of Nvidia's early technology ventures. He has nearly 200 invention patents, mostly related to computer graphics and I/O equipment, and was also responsible for the introduction of important technical talents at the beginning of NVIDIA.

Prior to joining NVIDIA, he designed IBM's professional graphics controller, the world's first graphics processor for PCs. Before the three founders officially founded NVIDIA, they tentatively named the company after Primm's surname.

However, 10 years after Nvidia was founded, Prim completely withdrew from Nvidia due to family problems. His ex-wife has a long history of domestic violence against him, and has repeatedly attracted the police to deal with it, and finally went to court and ended in divorce.

Prim began his philanthropic and educational career after Nvidia went public in 1999, raising a large amount of money from the sale of Nvidia stock and donating it to his university alma mater, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in New York, for a total of $275 million. In 2023, he spent $95 million to introduce IBM's Quamtum System One quantum computer to Rensselaer Polytechnic Technology, making Rensselaer Polytechnic University the only university in the world to have such a computer.

1. A big man in the field of computer graphics, designing the world's first PC graphics processor

As a child, Prim showed a keen interest in computers. He spent his childhood with his family on the East Coast of the United States, eventually settling in Cleveland. In addition to computers, he also plays classical music and worked as a cellist for four years in college.

Prim attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in New York, a school known for producing outstanding engineers and one of the four largest engineering schools in the United States. Prim could have chosen a more well-known university, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), but he learned that Rensselaer Polytechnic Technology had the most advanced IBM computers at the time, so he chose the university.

Prior to founding NVIDIA, Prim worked at Vermont Microsystems and Sun Microsystems, where he did groundbreaking work in the field of computer graphics. While working at Vermont Microsystems, Prim designed IBM's professional graphics controller (PGC), the world's first graphics processor for PCs, for IBM. He is the architect and lead designer of PGC. This processor was one of the most advanced graphics processors of its time, offering a high resolution of 640 × 480 pixels, 256 colors to choose from a palette of 4,096 colors, and a refresh rate of 60 Hz.

▲Prim's graphics processor designed for IBM (source: "GPU Chronicles - The Road to Innovation")

In 1986, Prim joined Sun Microsystems. During his time at Sun, Prim designed the Frame Buffer Controller (FBC) and Transform Engine in the Transform Engine and Cursor (TEC) chips in Sun's star GX series graphics accelerator cards.

The framebuffer controller is the interface between the GPU render pipeline and the display output, and is essential for smooth and efficient graphics rendering and display. The TEC chip enables the accelerator card to support more types of computing needs.

Prim's original GX graphics accelerator card could provide 50 megabytes of floating-point computing (MFLOPS) of arithmetic computing power, which was not the most advanced computing power at the time. But at the end of the 80s, powerful 3D graphics systems were expensive and difficult to program. Prim used an open operating system and graphics library in the design, and at the same time, it did not blindly pile up on the chip, which made the GX graphics acceleration card relatively inexpensive, so that more developers can get graphics acceleration tools.

▲GX graphics acceleration card designed by Prim (source: "GPU Chronicles - The Road to Innovation")

GX graphics accelerator cards also allow developers to program directly in a high-level language like C in their native environment, without the need for special simulators, assemblers, microcode, or hardware, enabling a level of device control that has never been seen before. These ideas were later embodied in NVIDIA's early days of UDA (Unified Drive Architecture), CG (C for Graphics), and eventually CUDA. Huang believes that without CUDA, there would be no Nvidia today.

Second, Huang was Huang's top boss when he was young, and he no longer participated in the hardware architecture design after the technical path failed

Sun Microsystems is where Prim met Jensen Huang and another founder, Chris Malachowsky. In the late '80s, Huang joined Sun Microsystems on a development project led by Prim and Malachorski as a resident employee at semiconductor design firm LSI Logic. Huang interacted extensively with Prim and Malachorski during his time at work, which drew their attention to Huang's talent. They have developed strong friendships during their time at work.

▲A recent group photo of the three founders of NVIDIA, from left to right: Prim, Jensen Huang, and Malachowski (source: NVIDIA)

Prim and Malachowski, who were actually the first two founders to start their own business, took a lot of time to convince Huang to join the company. Before Nvidia was officially founded in 1993, the three founders tentatively named their startup Primal Computer after Priem. In one of the bedrooms of Prim's house, they completed the preparations for Nvidia's start-up.

▲ Prim in the 90s (Source: Prim)

In the early days of NVIDIA, as the company's CTO, Primm was responsible for the introduction of many technical talents, including John Montrym, the chief architect of NVIDIA. Monterram later designed the world's first configurable graphics processor, the NV20, which opened the door to a machine learning revolution.

In the early days of its founding, Nvidia insisted on using the quad rendering technology that Prim used during his time at Sun Microsystems. Quads can be more easily aligned with the pixel grid when rendering, which helps reduce the aliasing effect of texture mapping.

But this vision of Nvidia has not been recognized by the market. Game developers at the time rarely used quad rendering techniques, and most used triangle rendering techniques. In September 1995, Microsoft announced the DirectX specification based on triangle rendering, and also ported the most popular Doom series of games to DirectX.

Two months later, NVIDIA's NV1 chip was officially released, and at this time, the market did not have much interest in the NV1 chip with quadrilateral rendering.

▲Sega equipment equipped with NV1 (Source: YouTube)

Nvidia's partner, Japanese console giant Sega, has also abandoned plans to use NV1 further due to programming difficulties and slow development progress. Huang traveled to Japan to meet with then-Sega president Shoichiro Irito, who decided to give Nvidia another chance — a $5 million investment.

The life-saving money allowed Nvidia to continue working with Sega on the NV2, which is also based on quad rendering technology. During the project, Prim flew to Japan seven times to advance the work, but the project was stillborn and the NV2 product was never launched.

Prim is no longer involved in hardware architecture after the NV2 project, but he continues to contribute to other projects at NVIDIA. Nvidia's first two products failed not only because of quad rendering, but also because they wanted to pack graphics, audio, and gamepad ports into a single accelerator card, which made the product too expensive and didn't perform optimally in every part.

Don Valentine of Sequoia Capital, a legendary Silicon Valley investor, Valentine) gave Nvidia its first investment. After Nvidia's financial crisis, he analyzed to Huang that Nvidia's positioning was not clear enough and that it had to choose one of the three directions of computer graphics companies, audio companies and game console companies.

Prim shared a similar sentiment, having a lengthy conversation with Huang in the company's hallway and eventually convincing Huang to pursue the path of a graphics accelerator.

This decision allowed Nvidia to finally get out of the quagmire and make their first widely recognized product, the RIVA 128, in the market. In a 2022 sharing session, Prim said it was a turning point in the spirit of Nvidia and completely reshaped Nvidia.

▲ RIVA 128（来源：Videocard Virtual Museum）

During his 10 years as CTO at NVIDIA, Prim's vision was instrumental in shaping the company's trajectory and driving its success in the tech industry. He has a keen understanding of emerging trends and technologies, and realized early on that GPUs can be used for more than just computer graphics, pushing NVIDIA to be at the forefront of technological innovation.

3. Nearly 10% of the stock was abandoned as soon as it went public, and it is now worth about $130 billion

In 1999, Nvidia went public with a market capitalization of $1.1 billion and officially named the company's product GPU. In July of the same year, Prim also married his first wife, Veronica.

Two months later, he founded the Prim Family Foundation, to which he donated more than three-quarters of his 12.8% (at IPO) stake in Nvidia. Based on the number of shares today, this is equivalent to about 1 billion shares. In an interview with Forbes in 2023, he said that the main reason for the donation was that he didn't want the government to get any tax from the stock sale.

At that time, Prim thought that his remaining stake in Nvidia might eventually be worth $50 million, and in an interview with Forbes in 2023, Prim confided that he did not expect Nvidia's market capitalization to exceed a trillion dollars.

Today, Nvidia's market capitalization is firmly at $3 trillion, and Primm's stock is now worth more than $100 billion if it hadn't been sold.

Initially, the Prim Family Foundation's primary donations were to conservation organizations such as The Nature Conservancy and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, but later it shifted primarily to education. The Prim Family Foundation's early website wrote, "We believe that much of the suffering is avoidable because it was within our control in the first place." He believes that education can solve many of the problems facing humanity at the source.

▲Some public welfare projects and partners supported by the Prim Family Foundation (Source: Prim Family Foundation)

Prim's philanthropic fascination may have something to do with his family's religious background. Although he himself was not a Christian, his father, sister and grandparents were all pastors.

In 2000, Prim returned to his university alma mater, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, to receive the Entrepreneur of the Year award from the university. "As soon as I walked into the campus, I felt like this was my calling," Prim said. He said he donated $1 million to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute twice, in 2000 and 2001. From 2002 to the present, the Prim Family Foundation began donating less than $10 million annually to Rensselaer Polytechnic University.

In addition, in 2001, when Prim began giving to Rensselaer Polytechnic University, the university announced that it had received an anonymous gift promising to donate $360 million in installments. But neither Prim nor the school commented on whether he was a donor. If Prim were to be counted in the anonymous donation, he may have given $275 million to Rensselaer Polytechnic University so far, or 40 percent of the total endowment received by Rensselaer Polytechnic during that period. He also pledged to donate about $80 million more.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is not just a recipient of Prim's donation, but also a place where he finds meaning and solace. Commenting on his donation to his alma mater, Prim said: "I went through hell in the outside world, and this school was actually my refuge. He has served on Rensselaer Polytechnic's Board of Trustees since 2003, which he sees as his "goal" and "way to maintain his sanity."

Fourth, he resigned from Nvidia due to family problems and donated $95 million to the Zero Foundation

Prim's philanthropy was booming, but his work at Nvidia didn't go well. Prim said he was distracted by personal problems at home and couldn't do what he wanted at work, so he resigned as Nvidia's CTO in 2003, the 10th anniversary of Nvidia's founding, and left Nvidia altogether.

In an interview with Forbes in 2023, Prim said that his life for the next 10 years was a mess. Prim's wife, who has a long history of domestic violence against him, said in court filings in 2013 that his wife's domestic violence against him "resulted in 19 written police reports, five arrests, three criminal convictions, three criminal protection orders, one civil temporary restraining order, and three probations" before the two divorced.

Prim said he had met with then-California senators to advocate for an amendment that would make it harder for perpetrators of alleged domestic violence to obtain spousal support, which eventually passed. His ex-wife has not pleaded guilty to the domestic violence misdemeanor charge, and he has never paid spousal support.

During this time, Prim continued to help Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He said Rensselaer Polytechnic University had been "struggling" financially for decades. His donation was first used for basic needs, such as hiring more teachers, renovating buildings, and buying lab equipment. He then made a donation to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Research and the Center for the Performing Arts.

▲The official website of the Prim Family Foundation (source: Prim Family Foundation)

In 2023, Prim made his largest ever gift of $95 million. The funds will be used to introduce IBM's quantum computer, Quantum System One. This will make Rensselaer Polytechnic University the only university in the world to have an IBM Quantum System One quantum computer. He expects the donation to kick off his foundation's "journey to zero."

Conclusion: I also regretted giving up the stock early, and now I am isolated

Prim's net worth is now only about $30 million, which is far less than the wealth of the other two founders. Like Primm, Nvidia founder Malachowski, who has retired from the game, has not disclosed his holdings recently. But a 2002 disclosure revealed that he owned 773 million shares of Nvidia at the time, or about $100 billion based on Nvidia's current market capitalization.

Prim now lives in a $6 million home near Fremont, Calif., far from the power grid and with unreliable cell phone service. He also owns a Gulfstream G450 premium private jet called "Snoopy" that flies to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 4 times a year.

Prim is currently in a state of isolation, using a disposable email address made up of random numbers when contacting others, and almost no one can disturb him. He said he had barely received spam since 2001.

Prim only thinks about Nvidia twice a day — when he puts on and takes off his Nvidia 5th anniversary watch. But he is so free and easy, and when he sees Nvidia's soaring stock price, he will also be a little unwilling. In a 2023 interview with Forbes, he said: "I did something a little crazy, and I wish I had kept some more Nvidia stock at that time. ”

来源：《GPU编年史——创新之路》（The History of the GPU—Steps to Invention），《福布斯》，《财富杂志》

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