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Uncapped · 2 min · Sep 15, 2026

Nvidia's long fight as a public company shaped its grit

Andrew Feldman argues Nvidia's edge is not CUDA or its chip architecture, but the grit built through a decade of poor public-market performance. He sees that persistence as a lasting company advantage.

Andrew Feldman

Andrew Feldman is cofounder and CEO of Cerebras Systems.

Co-founded and leads Cerebras Systems, whose wafer-scale engine is the largest processor in computing history.

  • Jack Altman, Host · General partner, Benchmark

    Co-founded Lattice and ran it until 2023, then started his fund, Alt Capital.

About this segment

Andrew Feldman argues Nvidia's edge is not CUDA or its chip architecture, but the grit built through a decade of poor public-market performance. He sees that persistence as a lasting company advantage.

From “Andrew Feldman on Building Cerebras and the Future of Chips | Ep. 57”, Sep 15, 2026. Watch the full episode

“They look to CUDA. I don't think it's CUDA. They look to their chip architecture. I don't think it's their chip architecture.”
Andrew Feldmanat 55:38 · Uncapped55:38

Takeaways

  1. Feldman rejects CUDA and chip architecture as the main explanation.
  2. He says Nvidia traded poorly for roughly a decade.
  3. He sees persistence through setbacks as part of Nvidia's organizational DNA.

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 4:09Attacking Goliath requires a radically better productPro pick 5:39
  2. 9:37Failure analysis kept Cerebras going through 18 months of setbacks3:29
  3. 16:13Chip fabs are a rare, tightly coupled supply chain6:53
  4. 43:57Data center delivery depends on power gear and site readiness6:05
  5. 51:57Faster inference can open new markets and increase throughput3:26

  6. 55:12Nvidia's long fight as a public company shaped its grit2:25

  7. 29:00Cerebras made architectural choices to adapt as AI changed4:15Up next
  8. 12:55Cerebras is developing memory and optical links alongside compute3:07

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

  1. 55:18

    and as a vector, we are extremely interested in chasing down. What has it been about NVIDIA that has made them have the just crazy run that they've had? I think most people are wrong about what makes NVIDIA great. First, NVIDIA is, you know, in the first quarter of this century, they're the great company without any question. And I think people look to a bunch of things. They look to CUDA. I don't think it's CUDA.

  2. 55:48

    They look to their chip architecture. I don't think it's their chip architecture. It's this unbelievable grit and intensity that was born of a A decade of not having success as a public company. I think if you look at their stock chart between about 2003 and 2013, 2004, 2014, for a decade, they traded horribly. And you're a public company, and you're fighting tooth and nail, and no one's listening to you, and you can't sell very much.

  3. 56:22

    and the relentlessness and the grit that that takes is awesome and to come out of that as the most valuable company a decade later right the most valuable company in the world that sort of intensity and grit for a company of their size in my view makes them one of the great companies in history it's it's not this these other things these are just things people say but that that sort of a decade of being a public company and fighting and fighting and fighting that gets in your dna and that's awesome yeah i mean you like you see jensen like still at events fighting tooth and nail yeah right i mean where could you have imagined five trillion dollar companies could you imagine old tech leaders before jensen doing that no right right that kind of fight yeah i mean that in my view is what's awesome yeah um that level of fight

  4. 57:16

    I think the other stuff, cool, good, but when I look at what I can do better, when I look at sort of what I ought to be thinking about as being a CEO, those are the things I look to. Do you think, did your near-death experiences give your company some of that DNA?