Philippa Kaur

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Almost a decade ago, a price war broke out between petrostates in the Persian Gulf and the frackers in America, whose innovative drilling techniques gave rise to the shale revolution. In December 2014 The Economist put a picture on its cover of both antagonists standing back to back, frowns on their faces and petrol pumps at the ready. It called the new economics of oil “Sheikhs v shale”. Missing from that picture were two companies that until then had been the biggest stalwarts of America’s oil industry, ExxonMobil and Chevron. Had they been pictured, the two crusty supermajors would probably be standing awkwardly on the sidelines, struggling to make sense of what was going on. At last, they are moving back to centre stage. For much of the interim period the petrostates and the hardscrabble shale producers remained critical to this new oil order, though their tussle unfolded in strange ways. In 2016 the OPEC producers’ cartel joined forces with Russia to create OPEC+, which its autocratic masterminds hoped would let them control oil prices in order to benefit their regimes. Yet instead of responding by dousing the world in oil, the frackers unexpectedly developed OPEC-like self-restraint. Under pressure from investors to improve profits, they kept a tight rein on drilling activity even when crude surged above $100 a barrel.That unusual discipline continued until 2023, when American producers awoke from their chaste slumber. Record shale output allowed America to extract more oil than any country in history, offsetting desperate efforts by OPEC+ to curtail production in order to prop up prices. According to S&P Global, a consultancy, America and Canada together pumped more oil and gas in 2023 than the whole of the Middle East. The bonanza spread to South America, where producers in Brazil and Guyana also drilled unprecedented amounts of oil. Daniel Yergin, an energy historian, calls it “the great rebalancing”—a historic shift of oil production away from the Gulf and towards the western hemisphere.It is in this context that you should consider two recent megadeals: ExxonMobil’s $64.5bn merger with Pioneer Natural Resources, a fracking giant, and Chevron’s $60bn acquisition of Hess, an independent producer. Both acquisitions are aimed at regaining the clout in the oil industry that was once their birthright. Alone, neither is powerful enough to push around oil prices in the way OPEC+ tries to. But together, their ambitions to double down on production in the Americas represents a new challenge to the petrostates. Forget the scrappy frackers. It is the deep-pocketed and tech-savvy supermajors that the sheikhs should worry about.The two firms look like the shrewdest operators in today’s oil markets. One reason is their focus on oil that is cheap to produce. This is likely to leave them in a good position when demand for the stuff eventually wanes amid the shift to cleaner energy. The two acquisitions give the duo access to abundant fresh resources. The Pioneer deal is a big bet on the future of shale. Once completed by mid-2024, it aims to double ExxonMobil’s production capacity in the shale-rich Permian Basin of West Texas to 1.3m barrels a day. This will rise to 2m barrels by 2027. By buying Hess, Chevron, too, gets better access to some shale acreage where, like its bigger rival, it hopes to boost production by applying advanced technology and financial muscle. The company believes that an even bigger prize is Hess’s oil assets developed in partnership with ExxonMobil off the coast of Guyana, the extraction of which is, in keeping with the times, not very carbon-intensive. Taken together, the western-hemisphere wagers give the two companies options regardless of oil’s precise future. Shale is “short-cycle” production that can be quickly flexed depending on the near-term vagaries of demand. Guyana is a longer-term project.The second reason the supermajors are looking shrewd is being guided by the economics of oil rather than by energy geopolitics. Unlike OPEC+, their aim is not to rig prices. It is to turn a profit whatever happens in the markets. They can achieve this by integrating exploration and production with downstream operations such as refining and distribution. Contrast that with Saudi Aramco, the biggest oil firm of all. Like ExxonMobil and Chevron, it is a model of American-style efficiency. But when it comes to output management, it is also at the mercy of Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman’s desire to walk tall on the world stage.Molecules v electrons A third reason for the American firms’ bright prospects has to do with their decarbonisation strategies. Both refused to take climate change seriously for too long. But once they did, they chose to back clean-energy technologies such as carbon capture and storage and hydrogen production that fit well with their engineering skills in oil and gas. The dabbling by their European counterparts, such as Shell and BP, in the provision of low-carbon electricity has meanwhile proved tougher than expected.Like everyone, the Americans remain hostages to fortune. Their shale exposure may deplete far sooner than they expect; forecasters already point to a decline in the number of drilling rigs as an ominous sign. In a worst-case (albeit unlikely) scenario, Venezuela may try to make good on its threat to seize oil-rich territory from Guyana, its neighbour, putting their assets there in jeopardy. Most serious, they may have disastrously miscalculated the speed of the energy transition, leaving them with oceans of stranded oil if demand collapses.For now, though, they look more like old pros in an industry in the grip of upheaval. They know the value of focusing on profitable growth, of keeping their long-term options open and of sticking to their free-market guns. The sheikhs have long insisted that, whatever oil’s future, their access to abundant reserves will ensure they will be the last oilmen standing. America’s supermajors will not let that happen without a fight. ■ More

Dear friends and colleagues,Happy New Year! This time last year, for the ninth year in a row, I warned you that there had never been a more uncertain outlook for our business. My message this year is exactly the same, only more so. The fog of unpredictability is again playing havoc with the clear skies of planning.We all know the term “permacrisis”. We have all heard of the acronym “VUCA”, which stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. We all understand that the fourth industrial revolution is upon us. But my belief is that these three great forces have come together in an age of what I am christening “permavucalution”.It is my contention that three big permavucalutionary trends are at work. One is artificial intelligence. This technology will turbocharge the pace of change. Don’t just take my word for it. The World Economic Forum thinks so, too. AI is so disruptive that it may end up disrupting disruption itself. If you are struggling to make sense of that sentence, don’t worry: you are not alone.I have appointed Denise Laplange to head up our new Project for Rapid AI peRformance Improvement and Enhancement. I know you will make Denise feel very welcome. She and the PRAIRIE team will give us a full update on their plans for our use of AI later in January. For now, though, I urge you to embrace this technology in your own work. I often use ChatGPT to say “no” to conference invitations, for example, or to give generic responses to really unimportant emails. I want you to follow my example. Let’s Experiment. Let’s Explore. Let’s Tinker. Let’s EET. We need to get our arms around AI or we risk reaping a whirlwind of chickens coming home to roost.I know some of you are worried by what AI might mean for your own futures. I say to you: you cannot make an omelette without breaking some eggs. What if you don’t like omelettes, you reply? That’s just ridiculous: who doesn’t like omelettes? Anyway I want to reassure you: AI is a way to make us all better at what we do. It is not likely to be the precursor to immediate large-scale lay-offs.The second permavucalutionary trend is climate change. At COP28, I had a chance to speak to some actual people who are living with the consequences of global warming. That experience was humbling and inspiring: it made me realise we have to do more in this area. As a company we are making every effort to reduce our own carbon footprint, but action is never enough. We also need to be part of the conversation. That’s why I’m so pleased today to announce the launch of our new #whatdoyousee? marketing campaign.When I look in the mirror, I don’t just see a highly successful executive, someone who is driven to make the most of himself every day. I also see a father, an ex-husband, a brother, a Peloton rider, a vintage-car collector and a citizen of Earth. What do you see? Please post your own reflections—pun very much intended—on social media. You can also send me an email (and see how I incorporate ChatGPT into my work).The third manifestation of the permavucalution is a shortage of talent. By talent, I’m not talking about employees in general. I’m talking about the right type of employees—people who are willing to take big bets, who go the extra mile, who see opportunity where others see nothing but extreme danger. I’m talking about some of you.I have mentioned how uncertain and volatile everything is. That means we have to sprint to stand still. But that’s not all. To respond to constant changes we also need the agility of a mountain goat. And to spot those changes coming, we require the radar of a bat. Now just ask yourself this question: have you ever seen a sprinting goat-bat? That tells you something about the scale of the challenge that we all face.I know that this level of uncertainty can be disorientating, even frightening. But if we do not think outside the box and push the envelope, we will never be able to capture lightning in a bottle.Finally, my usual plea: be humble. I have coined a brand new term in this message but I am not doing so for fame or recognition as a deep thinker. I know I don’t have all the answers. If I have a great idea, I don’t just plough ahead with it. I ask my direct reports whether they think it is a great idea first, and only when they agree that it is do I act. Have the humility to follow my example and this company will not just survive the age of permavucalution. It will thrive.Here’s to 2024! Stew Pidd, CEO. ■ More

Dear friends and colleagues, Happy New Year! This time last year, for the ninth year in a row, I warned you that there had never been a more uncertain outlook for our business. My message this year is exactly the same, only more so. The fog of unpredictability is again playing havoc with the clear skies of planning.We all know the term “permacrisis”. We have all heard of the acronym “VUCA”, which stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. We all understand that the fourth industrial revolution is upon us. But my belief is that these three great forces have come together in an age of what I am christening “permavucalution”.It is my contention that three big permavucalutionary trends are at work. One is artificial intelligence. This technology will turbocharge the pace of change. Don’t just take my word for it. The World Economic Forum thinks so, too. AI is so disruptive that it may end up disrupting disruption itself. If you are struggling to make sense of that sentence, don’t worry: you are not alone.I have appointed Denise Laplange to head up our new Project for Rapid AI peRformance Improvement and Enhancement. I know you will make Denise feel very welcome. She and the PRAIRIE team will give us a full update on their plans for our use of AI later in January. For now, though, I urge you to embrace this technology in your own work. I often use ChatGPT to say “no” to conference invitations, for example, or to give generic responses to really unimportant emails. I want you to follow my example. Let’s Experiment. Let’s Explore. Let’s Tinker. Let’s EET. We need to get our arms around AI or we risk reaping a whirlwind of chickens coming home to roost.I know some of you are worried by what AI might mean for your own futures. I say to you: you cannot make an omelette without breaking some eggs. What if you don’t like omelettes, you reply? That’s just ridiculous: who doesn’t like omelettes? Anyway, I want to reassure you: AI is a way to make us all better at what we do. It is not likely to be the precursor to immediate large-scale lay-offs.The second permavucalutionary trend is climate change. At COP28, I had a chance to speak to some actual people who are living with the consequences of global warming. That experience was humbling and inspiring: it made me realise we have to do more in this area. As a company we are making every effort to reduce our own carbon footprint, but action is never enough. We also need to be part of the conversation. That’s why I’m so pleased today to announce the launch of our new #whatdoyousee? marketing campaign.When I look in the mirror, I don’t just see a highly successful executive, someone who is driven to make the most of himself every day. I also see a father, an ex-husband, a brother, a Peloton rider, a vintage-car collector and a citizen of Earth. What do you see? Please post your own reflections—pun very much intended—on social media. You can also send me an email (and see how I incorporate ChatGPT into my work).The third manifestation of the permavucalution is a shortage of talent. By talent, I’m not talking about employees in general. I’m talking about the right type of employees—people who are willing to take big bets, who go the extra mile, who see opportunity where others see nothing but extreme danger. I’m talking about some of you.I have mentioned how uncertain and volatile everything is. That means we have to sprint to stand still. But that’s not all. To respond to constant changes we also need the agility of a mountain goat. And to spot those changes coming, we require the radar of a bat. Now just ask yourself this question: have you ever seen a sprinting goat-bat? That tells you something about the scale of the challenge that we all face.I know that this level of uncertainty can be disorientating, even frightening. But if we do not think outside the box and push the envelope, we will never be able to capture lightning in a bottle.Finally, my usual plea: be humble. I have coined a brand new term in this message but I am not doing so for fame or recognition as a deep thinker. I know I don’t have all the answers. If I have a great idea, I don’t just plough ahead with it. I ask my direct reports whether they think it is a great idea first, and only when they agree that it is do I act. Have the humility to follow my example and this company will not just survive the age of permavucalution. It will thrive.Here’s to 2024! Stew Pidd, CEO.Read more from Bartleby, our columnist on management and work:The return of The Economist’s agony uncle (Dec 20th)How to master the art of delegation (Dec 14th)Why Monday is the most misunderstood day (Dec 7th)Also: How the Bartleby column got its name More

The hottest technology of 2023 had a busy last few weeks of the year. On November 28th Abu Dhabi launched a new state-backed artificial-intelligence firm, AI71, that will commercialise its leading “large language model” (LLM), Falcon. On December 11th Mistral, a seven-month-old French model-builder, announced a blockbuster $400m funding round, which insiders say will value the firm at over $2bn. Four days later Krutrim, a new Indian startup, unveiled India’s first multilingual LLM, barely a week after Sarvam, a five-month old one, raised $41m to build similar Indian-language models.Ever since OpenAI, an American firm, launched ChatGPT, its human-like conversationalist, in November 2022, just about every month has brought a flurry of similar news. Against that backdrop, the three latest announcements might look unexceptional. Look closer, though, and they hint at something more profound. The three companies are, in their own distinct ways, vying to become AI national champions. “We want AI71 to compete globally with the likes of OpenAI”, says Faisal al-Bannai of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council, the state agency behind the Emirati startup. “Bravo to Mistral, that’s French genius,” crowed Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, recently. ChatGPT and other English-first LLMs “cannot capture our culture, language and ethos”, declared Krutrim’s founder, Bhavish Aggarwal. Sarvam started with Indian languages because, in the words of its co-founder, Vivek Raghavan, “We’re building an Indian company.”AI is already at the heart of the intensifying technological contest between America and China. Over the past year they have pledged $40bn-50bn apiece for AI investments. Other countries do not want to be left behind—or stuck with a foreign critical technology over which they have little control. In the past year another six particularly AI-ambitious governments around the world—Britain, France, Germany, India, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—have promised to bankroll AI to the collective tune of around $40bn. Most of this will go towards purchases of graphics-processing units (GPUs, the type of chips that makes AI intelligent) and factories to make such chips, as well as, to a lesser extent, support for AI firms. The nature and degree of state involvement varies from one wannabe AI superpower to another. It is early days, but the contours of new AI-industrial complexes are emerging.Start with America, whose tech firms give everyone else AI envy. Its vibrant private sector is innovating furiously without direct support from Uncle Sam. Instead, the federal government is spending around $50bn over five years to increase domestic chipmaking capacity. The idea is to reduce America’s reliance on Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturers such as TSMC, the world’s biggest and most sophisticated such company. Supplies from Taiwan could, fear security hawks in Washington, be imperilled should China decide to invade the island, which it considers part of its territory.Another way America intends to stay ahead of the pack is by nobbling rivals. President Joe Biden’s administration has enacted brutal export controls that ban the sale of cutting-edge AI technology, including chips and chipmaking equipment, to adversaries such as China and Russia. It has also barred Americans from sharing their AI expertise with those countries.It is now coercing those on the geopolitical fence to fall in line. In October the American government started requiring companies in third countries, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, to secure a licence in order to buy AI chips from Nvidia, an American company that sells most of them. The rules have a “presumption of approval”. That means the government will “probably allow” sales to such firms, says Gregory Allen, who used to work on AI policy at the Department of Defence—as long, that is, as they do not have close ties to China. On December 6th Peng Xiao, who runs a state-backed AI startup in Abu Dhabi called G42, announced that the company would be cutting ties with Chinese hardware suppliers like Huawei, a Chinese electronics company. “We cannot work with both sides,” he told the Financial Times.China’s AI strategy is in large part a response to American techno-containment. According to data from JW Insights, a research firm, between 2021 and 2022 the Chinese state has spent nearly $300bn to recreate the chip supply chain (for AI and other semiconductors) at home, where it would be immune from Western sanctions. A lot of that money is probably wasted. But it almost certainly helped Huawei and SMIC, China’s biggest chipmaker, design and manufacture a surprisingly sophisticated GPU last year.The central and local authorities also channel capital into AI firms via state-backed “guidance funds”, nearly 2,000 of which around the country invest in all manner of technologies deemed to be strategically important. The Communist Party is guiding private money, too, towards its technological priorities. Often it does so by cracking down on certain sectors—most recently, in December, video-gaming—while dropping heavy hints about which industries investors should be eyeing instead. The government is also promoting data exchanges, where businesses can trade commercial data on everything from sales to production, allowing small firms with AI ambitions to compete where previously only large data-rich firms could. There are now 50 such exchanges in China.Elements of this state-led approach are now being emulated in other parts of the world, most notably in the Gulf’s petrostates. Being autocracies, Saudi Arabia and the UAE can move faster than democratic governments, which must heed voters’ concerns about AI’s impact on things like privacy and jobs. Being wealthy, they afford to buy both the necessary GPUs (on which the two countries have together so far splurged around $500m) and the energy needed to run the power-hungry chips.They can also plough money into developing human capital. Their richly endowed universities are quickly climbing up global rankings. The AI programme at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, a Saudi institution, and the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) in Abu Dhabi, the world’s first AI-focused school, have poached star professors from illustrious institutions such as University of California, Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. And nearly all of MBZUAI’s graduates, who number a couple of hundred, stay in the region to work at local firms and labs, says its provost, Timothy Baldwin (himself lured to the Middle East from the University of Melbourne).The Gulf approach is producing results. The capabilities of the Falcon model, first built by a team of 20 or so engineers, rival those of Llama 2, the most widely used “open-source” model devised by Meta, an American tech giant. AI71 plans to improve its open-source models using national data sets from fields including health, education and, some day, perhaps oil. “In the last 50 years, oil drove the country…now data is the new oil,” says Mr al-Bannai.A third group of governments is combining elements of America’s approach with those of the Chinese and Emiratis. The EU has its version of America’s incentives for domestic chipmaking. So do some member states: Germany is footing a third of the €30bn ($33bn) bill for a new chip factory to be built there by Intel, an American chipmaker. Outside the bloc, Britain has promised to funnel £1bn ($1.3bn) over five years to AI and supercomputing (albeit without going into detail about how exactly the money will be spent). India’s government is promoting manufacturing, including of semiconductors, with generous “production-linked incentives”, encouraging big cloud-computing providers to build more Indian data centres, where AI models are trained, and thinking about buying $1.2bn-worth of GPUs.Like China and the Gulf but unlike America, where federal and state governments are reluctant to part with public data, India and some European countries are keener on making such data available to companies. France’s government “has been very supportive” in that regard, says Arthur Mensch, Mistral’s boss. Britain’s is considering allowing firms to tap rich data belonging to the National Health Service. India’s government has enormous amounts of data from its array of digital public services, known as the “India Stack”. Insiders expect it eventually to integrate Indian AI models into those digital services.In contrast to China, which regulates consumer-facing AI with a heavy hand, at least for now Britain, France, Germany and India favour light-touch rules for AI or, in India’s case, none at all. The French and German governments have soured on the EU’s AI Act, the final details of which are currently being hotly debated in Brussels—no doubt because it could undermine Mistral and Aleph Alpha, Germany’s most successful model-builder, which raised €460m in November.It is natural for countries to want some control over what may prove to be a transformational technology. Especially in sensitive and highly regulated sectors such as defence, banking or health care, many governments would rather not rely on imported AI. Yet each flavour of AI nationalism also carries risk.America’s beggar-thy-neighbour approach is likely to antagonise not just its adversaries but also some of its allies. China’s heavy regulation may offset some of the potential gains from its heavy spending. Building models for local languages, as Krutrim and Sarvam in India plan to do, may prove futile if foreign models continue to improve their multilingual capabilities.The Gulf’s bet on open-source models may misfire if other governments limit their use, as Mr Biden has hinted at in a recent executive order and the EU could do through its AI Act, out of fear that open LLMs could too easily get into the hands of mischief-makers. Saudi and Emirati institutions may struggle to hold on to talent; a developer who worked on Falcon admits it benefited greatly from a partnership with a French team of engineers who have since been poached by Hugging Face, a high-flying Silicon Valley AI startup. As one sceptical investor notes, it is not yet clear how vast or useful public Emirati data actually is.Handing companies sensitive data on things like citizens’ health could spark a public backlash even in autocratic places, let alone Britain, France or Germany. As for industrial policy, it has a lousy record of spurring innovation and economic growth when the industry in question is mature, which AI is not. Picking winners in a fast-changing field verges on the foolhardy.As Nathan Benaich of Air Street Capital, a venture-capital firm, sums it up, most efforts to create national models “are probably a waste of money”. This warning will not dissuade AI-curious governments, mindful of the rewards should they succeed, from meddling. Mr Macron will not be the only leader to greet it with a Gallic shrug. ■ More

It has been a tricky year atop the corporate ladder. Sluggish growth in many markets has set bosses scrambling to rein in costs just as inflation has spurred their workers to demand hefty pay rises. Fractious geopolitics and toxic culture wars have left corporate chieftains feeling like tightrope-walkers. The craze for generative artificial intelligence (AI) has had them fretting over looming technological disruption, too.Still, for some chief executives 2023 was a vintage year. To determine who did it best, The Economist has examined the performance of bosses of large listed companies in the S&P 1200 index, which covers most big economies bar China and India. We put aside those who have been in the job for less than three years, to avoid giving too much credit for replacing an inept predecessor. We then ranked the remaining chief executives by the returns they generated for shareholders relative to their sector’s average. The top ten by that measure included both household names and relative dark horses.Among the top ten were bosses of two companies—Cameco, a Canadian miner, and PulteGroup, an American homebuilder—whose stellar results were thanks mostly to macroeconomic forces (a surge in uranium prices and a slump in sales of existing homes, respectively). We left them out. Also on the list were the chief executives of two buy-out firms, 3i and Melrose Industries, whose results were more a testament to the performance of the bosses running their portfolio companies than the financiers on top. We excluded them, too. Last, we also removed Richard Blickman of BE Semiconductor Industries, a Dutch maker of chipmaking tools. His pay was rejected by shareholders—not a good look for any chief executive.image: The EconomistThat has left us with a shortlist of five superstar chief executives for 2023 (see table). In ascending order of shareholder returns these are: David Ricks of Eli Lilly, now the world’s most valuable pharmaceutical firm; David Vélez Osorno of Nubank, a Brazilian neobank that is gobbling up customers across Latin America; Sekiya Kazuma of Disco, a Japanese maker of cutting-edge tools for semiconductor production; Mark Zuckerberg of social-media giant Meta; and Jensen Huang of Nvidia, a chipmaker whose market value soared past $1trn this year.Over the holiday season all five can bask in the warm glow of having generated enormous value for shareholders. But who has had the best year of all?A case can be made for any of the five. Mr Ricks has put Eli Lilly close on the heels of Novo Nordisk, a Danish rival, in the bulging market for anti-obesity drugs and overseen extraordinary results in a very ordinary year for the industry. Few neobanks have managed to dislodge entrenched incumbents. Yet under Mr Osorno’s leadership Nubank, which he co-founded in 2013, has grown into the fifth-largest financial institution in Latin America by number of customers. Mr Kazuma, who also runs Disco’s research-and-development division, has kept his company at the frontier of semiconductor dicing and grinding for many years. After terrifying investors in 2022 with his descent into metaverse madness, Mr Zuckerberg delighted them in 2023 with his “year of efficiency” and his company’s forays into generative AI. And Mr Huang has cemented his firm’s position as the indispensable supplier of the chips powering the AI revolution.How, then, to choose? One way is to listen to the underlings. After all, a chief executive that hoists the share price but enrages staff is unlikely to succeed for long. We gathered figures from Glassdoor, an employee-review website, on how workers at the five companies felt about their chief executives and their companies more broadly.At a mere 62% Mr Zuckerberg’s approval rating is a clear outlier, suggesting that his “year of efficiency” has been as awful as it sounds for employees. Worker satisfaction at Disco also seems low (albeit with fewer respondents). One explanation may be the company’s odd mechanism for co-ordinating work. Teams use a virtual currency called Will to pay one another for providing services. Managers then dole out the currency among team members for performing tasks, which determines bonuses. All that sounds like an economist’s dream, but hardly collegial.Angering customers is also an unsound strategy for chief executives. This year a number of American states including California have sued Eli Lilly, among others, for allegedly overcharging for insulin, an essential drug for diabetics. The company’s decision in March to slash insulin prices by 70% has done little to quell the upset. (The company has rejected what it describes as the “false allegations” of the lawsuit in California.)As for Mr Osorno, not all of his strategy is paying off. Although Nubank is profitable as a whole, an achievement that has eluded many of its peers elsewhere, it is losing money in Mexico, where its approach of targeting the unbanked is proving costly. If Mr Osorno pulls it off, he could claim the prize in years to come.It is Mr Huang, then, who prevails. Few bosses have been as farsighted in their bets on AI as Nvidia’s chief. Over a decade ago Mr Huang realised that the graphical processing units his company produced were also good at training AI models. In the years that followed he readied Nvidia for the AI wave by investing in a proprietary software platform, CUDA, to help developers make use of its chips and by acquiring Mellanox, a supplier of networking technology that links many chips together to deliver greater processing power. The pay-off from those bets is now becoming clear; Nvidia controls over 80% of the market for specialist AI chips.Mr Huang, whose signature leather jacket has become as integral to his public persona as the turtlenecks sported by Steve Jobs, reportedly shares the Apple founder’s intensity and exacting standards. Nonetheless, he is adored by staff, with a 98% approval rating. All things considered, he has had the best 2023 of all. ■ More