Jensen Huang Contacts TSMC Founder via Yellow Pages Cold Call to Initiate Collaboration
In a Lex Fridman documentary, Jensen Huang recalled that he found the phone number for TSMC's U.S. office in the Yellow Pages, left multiple messages, and eventually wrote to Morris Chang, which led to a collaboration.
Huang mentioned that at the time, TSMC was about $300 million in scale and was in talks with UMC. He found the number in the Yellow Pages and left a message introducing Nvidia as a new startup producing computer graphics chips. After several unanswered calls, he wrote to Morris Chang. After some time, Chang called back in the evening, and Huang asked his colleagues, who were playing games, to be quiet.
Chang invited Huang to Taiwan, marking the beginning of their collaboration. Huang stated that this not only initiated a partnership but also the start of an entire industry. Nvidia has long relied on TSMC for chip manufacturing.
Funding shifted from cold calls and letters to long-term manufacturing cooperation. Startups are obtaining capacity by directly contacting founders. The path relying on formal channels is under pressure.
Source: Public Information
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Jensen Huang founded Nvidia in the 1990s when the company was small. TSMC was founded by Morris Chang and had limited scale in its early days. Nvidia needed a foundry to produce graphics chips. The collaboration between the two has lasted for decades.
Huang directly contacted Chang through Yellow Pages calls and letters. Chang returned the call and invited him to visit Taiwan. After that, Nvidia became an important customer of TSMC. Chang mentioned in his memoir that he considered inviting Huang to be the CEO of TSMC, but it was declined.
A similar path has emerged in the semiconductor industry where startup founders establish long-term collaborations by directly contacting the founders of large foundries. Currently, advanced chip manufacturing is highly concentrated at TSMC, and Nvidia's products rely on its capacity.
This essentially represents a capital path and restructuring of the industrial chain. Direct communication with founders replaces formal channels to obtain manufacturing resources. The mechanism is that Huang received a response from Chang after multiple calls and letters, leading to a visit to Taiwan, which helped Nvidia shift from potential bankruptcy risk to obtaining capacity support; long-term cooperation allowed both parties to grow from small companies to industry cores, with funding and capacity flow shifting from temporary attempts to continuous supply.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
Cold calls and letters from the Yellow Pages facilitated decades of manufacturing cooperation
Direct responses from founders opened long-term relationships between startups and foundries
A visit to Taiwan became the starting point for industrial cooperation between the two