Hyderabad: Nvidia and Reliance Industries have partnered to develop AI infrastructure in India. During the Nvidia AI Summit, held at the Jio World Convention Centre in Mumbai, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani sat for a fireside chat and shared their visions for the future of artificial intelligence (AI) in India. They touched upon many subjects, including the name-- Nvidia, giving it a different spin than the usual narrative.
Nvidia - Vidya
Mukesh Ambani expressed his determination to make the best LLM in Hindi while sharing his personal interpretation of the name "Nvidia". Ambani linked it to the Hindi word "Vidya", which means knowledge.
Jensen Huang responded with enthusiasm, revealing that he had always believed in the significance of the name Nvidia, despite initial scepticism from others.
"I knew, I named the company, right? I knew it," Huang said, adding that everybody said Nvidia is a horrible name, but he chose to stick with it.
Ambani then explained that in Indian tradition, Vidya is associated with Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge. He elaborated that when one sincerely devotes themselves to acquiring knowledge, prosperity, symbolised by the goddess Lakshmi, follows.
Huang responded that he had known the deeper meaning of the name all along. "32 years ago, I knew this," he said. "And now the story of Nvidia has been revealed to all of you."
Nvidia - Invidia
NVIDIA Corporation was founded in April 1993 by three computer scientists -- Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem -- with an initial focus on graphics-based computing and video games. It is said that the three founders would label documents with the letters 'N' and 'V'. A Yahoo Finance video claims the acronym NV was short for 'next version' while the Britannica page for NVIDIA Corporation claims it meant 'next vision'.
To name the incorporation, they looked for words with the letters 'N' and 'V'. According to Fortune, they first found the word NVision but dropped it after learning that a toilet paper manufacturer had already taken the name. Afterwards, they found the Latin word 'invidia' that meant 'envy', or the ancient Roman Goddess of Envy-- 'Invidia', thus leading to the name NVIDIA-- pronounced en-VID-eeyah.
The company's logo is a spiralling green eye, which is believed to be inspired by the figure of 'Invidia' and associated with an 'evil eye' that cast a curse on those she 'envied'. People of some cultures still wear 'evil eye' amulets to ward off the curse.
The name Nvidia sort of described the company's hope to design such a powerful graphics chip that would make competitors 'green with envy'. The slogan also appeared on one generation of Nvidia chips. Some believe that the Nvidia logo of the 'evil eye' was placed at the forefront by Huan as a reminder of his competitors.
The bottom line
Mukesh Ambani's personal interpretation of the word Nvidia as Vidya (knowledge) appears suitable for the chip manufacturer. Even Jensen Huang says it was the case all those years ago. However, it's really difficult to associate the 'evil eye' logo with the Hindu Goddess Saraswati of Knowledge and super easy to equate with the Roman Goddess Invidia of Envy. Whatever the case, we will have to take the words of Nvidia founders when it comes to the meaning of the name.
