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. Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episode about NVIDIA by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
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All right, we have a riddle for you.
See if you can guess what we're talking about today.
I was born at a Denny's restaurant.
My name is Latin for envy.
I played a lot of video games in my younger years.
Today I'm more into poetry and translation.
I'm 31 years old, and I've been down and out so many times that my unofficial motto is that I'm 30 days from going out of business.
Still don't have it.
What if we said for a moment I was the most valuable company on the planet?
Yeah, that's right.
The answer is the computer chip designer Nvidia.
And Nvidia's chips are the leading choice for artificial intelligence developers.
In the last couple of years, Nvidia's sales have shot up like a jet plane, its stock price more like a rocket.