Lex FridmanVisiting Taiwan w/ Jensen Huang | Lex Fridman
Lex Fridman
Taiwan's role 0:03
Lex arrives in Taiwan to spend time with Jensen Huang and to attend Computex in Taipei. The opening sets up Taiwan as a place that matters to the whole computing world. It supplies more than 90% of the most advanced semiconductors, and the summary of the trip treats that as a fact with huge technological and geopolitical weight.
Jensen and the stack 4:31
The conversation moves through NVIDIA systems, liquid cooling, Vera CPUs, and the shift from renting CPU cores to generating tokens. Jensen says the new business is built around moving through that loop as fast as possible. He also returns to the value of gamers, engineers, and the people in Taiwan who build the hardware layer that makes AI work.
Humility and manufacturing 9:31
Lex and Jensen keep talking about the mood around the conference: the kindness of people, the pressure of the keynote, and the humility of young engineers. Jensen says the AI boom is a chance to invest in the grid, sustainable energy, and manufacturing again. He also says Taiwan is a strategic partner in reindustrializing the United States because it sends engineers, money, and training when fabs are built there.
Taiwan's chip roots 17:01
Philips helped plant the early seed of Taiwan's semiconductor industry. That led into UMC and TSMC at the right moment, when IBM opened the specifications for PC chipsets. Engineers in Taiwan could build the motherboard chips, and that helped the PC market spread to companies like Compaq and Dell. Dell's long ties to Taiwan come up here as part of that same chain.
Night market favorites 19:00
At the night market, the food comes fast and hot, and everyone keeps passing dishes around. You taste shaved ice, sweet potato balls, noodles, oyster pancake, pork sausage, rice cake, and other small snacks. Jensen keeps greeting people, paying, and being refused change back. He talks about Taiwan's respect for engineering, and about how a girl he met said she learned to spell CoWoS before Gucci.
Family and hard work 30:06
The night market means more because he went there as a child with his parents, and even got cut on the face near a cook's knife while looking for a restroom. That memory stayed with him. He says the place still feels like home because people work hard, share what little they have, and keep doing the same dishes for years with care. He then turns to AI and robotics in China, where he says the companies are keenly compute starved, which pushes them to build efficient systems anyway.
Employee gathering 33:30
Back at the NVIDIA gathering, he thanks Taiwan for its hospitality and points out how many people have come from across the world. He says the island's supply chain strength comes from generosity, willingness to help, and very hard work. He notes that he has been at NVIDIA for 17 years, and the crowd's energy keeps building around him, even in the spots where the air conditioning is strongest.
Allowance and dating 38:01
At the end, he tells a story from college. He had no allowance growing up, because if he needed money he was expected to call home, but his future wife did have an allowance. He says he started dating her for her money so they could play video games, and he frames it as a joke about how differently they were raised.
Video games and dinner 39:03
He skips from AI-made video clips to a quick game of naming classic video games, then thanks the people who make them. He says video games have given him some of the happiest hours of his life and mentions past interviews with Dan Houser, Jeffrey Kaplan, Todd Howard, and Carmack. The scene then shifts to a family meal with braised pig’s feet, eggs, tofu, and asparagus, with everyone teasing the food and the camera work.
Power and export controls 44:32
The talk turns to export controls. Jensen says the case for them is that key resources and technologies, like rare earths or computers, can be used as force multipliers, so keeping them out of others’ hands can create an edge. He then makes the larger case for prosperity and a technology wealth flywheel. Rich countries are safer, he says, and long-term strength comes from keeping technology leadership and wealth growing together, while using controls only very selectively.
Avoiding conflict 49:00
He says the real question is whether America’s flywheel works better with China included or excluded, and he warns that competition can cross into conflict and destroy that flywheel for everyone. The way to reduce that risk is more interdependence: shared hardware, shared software, shared universities, and scientific collaboration. He closes by stressing that technology is a whole stack, that energy matters too, and that America’s advantage comes from innovation, English, and a platform people around the world can use.
Food and shared common ground 54:31
The conversation comes back to food and travel. They say people have far more in common than not, and that it is better to understand each other, collaborate, and compete as friends instead of making enemies. After that they head to another night market, where they try more dishes, praise the chicken and omelet, talk about eggs as a cheap protein across Southeast Asia, and joke about Jensen’s habit of moving from geopolitics to pandas and otters before ending on soup and ginger.
Taiwanese Breakfast 58:00
They move through a stream of Taiwanese breakfast foods and keep judging them by taste, texture, and the way they are named. They talk about egg crepes with sausage, ice cream with cilantro and nuts, green mangoes, taro balls, pork floss, onion pancakes, grass jelly, tofu, and durian. They keep returning to one idea: some foods sound strange or badly branded, but they taste excellent.
Foundries And Chips 1:10:02
The talk then turns to why he first came back to Taiwan. He says he was looking for a foundry because every big company wanted one once the PC revolution began and Windows 95 arrived. He links that moment to the rise of the chipset and fabless semiconductor business, and to the early competition among companies like Cirrus Logic, S3, Weitek, and Western Digital.
Soup Dumpling Mystery 1:16:02
They finish with more simple dishes, including turnip cake, steamed buns, and a soup dumpling. He says the food is basic but very good. The last point is the dumpling itself: it is hard to pick up without breaking, and the group wonders how the soup was put inside and kept from spilling.
TSMC’s early response 1:19:30
Jensen Huang recalls how hard it was to find foundry capacity, since many chip companies were making their own products and foundries were scarce. Some foundries wanted him to license NVIDIA’s technology just to get access. TSMC and UMC were different. They were small, open, and willing to talk without strings attached.
Morris Chang calls back 1:21:01
He says he first reached TSMC by phone and left a message, then wrote a long letter after no one returned his calls. Later, Morris Chang phoned him back while people outside his office were playing video games. Chang invited him to Taiwan, and that trip began a long partnership.
Choosing the right partner 1:23:01
Jensen says he visited both UMC and TSMC and liked them both, but TSMC stood out because Morris Chang kept saying what he could not do. That showed clear values around governance, integrity, partnership, and long-term thinking. Chang promised to jump through hoops for NVIDIA, and Jensen says TSMC has kept that promise for 30 years.
A loose long-term deal 1:25:00
He explains that chip work is too complex to lock down in every detail up front. You are choosing who to build with, not just what to buy. He prefers a loose relationship with rough justice, where each side sometimes wins and sometimes loses, because too much specificity makes the partnership brittle.
Letting partners win 1:27:01
Jensen says he wants employees and partners to know he wants them to win. He believes that if TSMC and his own people succeed, NVIDIA succeeds too. He also says it matters to leave something on the table and to care about the other side’s sustainability, because that attitude is remembered in Taiwan.
Closing in Taiwan 1:29:03
The conversation ends with joking about food, including Jensen acting as a guide and hiding one last dish under a blanket. They wrap up by saying they could keep doing this, then reflect on the whole Taiwan trip, the engineers, the street food, and the kindness they received. The final note is simple gratitude for being there and for the support around them.
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