Starboard Value’s Jeff Smith knows his firm sold its Nvidia stake way too soon, Tae Kim writes in “The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a…
"The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant," written by Tae Kim, a senior technology writer at Barron's, and publishing Dec. 10 by W.W. Norton & Company. The excerpt is from a chapter about activist hedge fund Starboard Value, founded by Jeff Smith.
The Starboard team met several times with Jensen and other Nvidia leaders to discuss strategy. Looking back on the investment years later, Smith said that Starboard primarily advocated for an aggressive stock buyback program and a de-emphasis on non-GPU projects such as phone processors. Starboard refrained from applying additional pressure after the meetings. The hedge fund eventually got its wish on the buybacks.
After a long series of discussions with the board, Starboard and Mellanox reached a compromise in June 2018. Mellanox would appoint three Starboard-approved members to its board and give the hedge fund additional future rights if Mellanox didn't meet certain undisclosed financial targets. Even with those concessions in hand, Starboard retained the option of waging a proxy fight to replace Waldman.
Eventually, the list was narrowed down to three serious bidders: Nvidia, Intel, and Xilinx, which made chips primarily for industrial uses. The three potential buyers got into a multi-month bidding war, with Intel and Xilinx topping out around a bid of $122.50 a share. Nvidia went just a little bit higher, at $125 per share. It won the bidding war on March 7, 2019, for an all-cash offer of $6.9 billion.
"Emerging AI and data-analytics workloads demand data-center-scale optimization," he said. Jensen was predicting that computing would move beyond one device—that the entire data center would become the computer. Brian Venturo, cofounder and CTO of CoreWeave, a leading GPU cloud-computing provider and a customer of Nvidia's, argues that InfiniBand technology still has the best solution to minimize latency, control network congestion, and to make workloads perform efficiently.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Kim Tae Ri Walks Into Stormy Sea In Despair On “Jeongnyeon: The Star Is Born”Will Kim Tae Ri be able to bounce back from her darkest hour in “Jeongnyeon: The Star is Born”? Based on a popular webtoon, “Jeongnyeon: The Star is Born”
Read more »
Kim Tae Ri Breaks Down Sobbing In The Rain On “Jeongnyeon: The Star Is Born”tvN’s “Jeongnyeon: The Star is Born” has shared a sneak peek of a heartbreaking moment from its upcoming episode. Based on a popular webtoon, “Jeongnyeon:
Read more »
‘Cobra Kai’ Star Alicia Hannah-Kim Talks About Season 6’s Surprising RomanceAlicia Hannah-Kim as Kim Da-Eun in Cobra Kai Season 6 Part 1.
Read more »
Sensei Kim Became A Likable Villain Against All Odds In Cobra Kai Season 6Kim Da-Eun (Alicia Hannah-Kim) speaking with someone in Cobra Kai season 6
Read more »
Activist Irenic backs Starboard's push to end News Corp's dual-class structureActivist Irenic Capital Management said Tuesday that it would back fellow dissident Starboard Value’s push to dissolve the dual-class structure at News…
Read more »
10 Best South Korean Movies of the 2010s, RankedHa Jung-woo, Kim Tae-ri, Kim Min-hee and Cho Jin-Woong in &39;The Handmaiden&39; all standing next to each other.
Read more »