Elon Musk Was the First to Recognize NVIDIA’s AI Potential Through the DGX 1 System, Jensen Huang Reveals

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang made headlines once again during his appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience where he reflected on the company’s early AI journey and the origins of the DGX 1 supercomputer. While NVIDIA is now a global powerhouse driving nearly every frontier of modern AI infrastructure, Huang revealed that the company’s earliest push into AI computing faced a surprising lack of market interest. In fact, according to Huang, there was only one person in the world who believed in DGX 1 at the time: Elon Musk.

Huang explained that NVIDIA invested billions into building the very first DGX 1 system, a groundbreaking GPU powered supercomputer designed for neural network training at a time when the broader industry was still focused on CPU centric workloads. Despite its capabilities no one wanted to buy it. There were zero purchase orders until Musk stepped forward.

Huang recalled Musk telling him: “You know what, I have a company that could really use this. It’s an AI company, and it’s a nonprofit, and we could really use one of these supercomputers.” Huang personally boxed up a DGX 1 unit in 2016 drove it to San Francisco and delivered it directly to Musk for his newly formed nonprofit OpenAI. This moment would become a foundational pivot point for NVIDIA’s future in the AI revolution.

At that time AI compute was still a niche domain and adoption remained slow across the industry. Musk’s early interest not only validated NVIDIA’s gamble but planted the seeds for the GPU driven AI boom that would erupt years later. What began as a single sale to OpenAI soon evolved into the global AI infrastructure race with NVIDIA now producing industry shaping systems across multiple generations including Ampere Hopper and Blackwell.

Huang also emphasized NVIDIA’s humble origins noting how extraordinary it is to see today’s overwhelming demand for NVIDIA hardware. The company is preparing to launch its next era with the Vera Rubin AI systems slated for release next year amid the largest data center and AI infrastructure expansion in history.

While NVIDIA is now synonymous with AI acceleration it is fascinating to recognize how early adopters like Elon Musk played a decisive role. Long before AI became the center of technological progress Musk saw potential where the rest of the market hesitated marking him effectively as NVIDIA’s first customer for its AI compute platform.

What do you think about Elon Musk’s early bet on AI compute? Did this moment change the trajectory of the AI industry? Share your view.