A fireside chat on Monday between Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the SIGGRAPH 2024 conference in Colorado took a few unexpected turns.
Huang Positive Start and Jacket Swap
It started innocently enough, with Huang waxing positive about the capabilities of Nvidia GPUs and Zuckerberg speaking about his vision of an AI chatbot future. But by the end, Huang and Zuckerberg were swapping custom-made jackets — a throwback to the viral meme from earlier in the year.
“It’s black and leather and shearling,” Zuckerberg said, describing the coat he brought for Huang. “It’s a vibe. I mean, get this guy a chain.”
Commemorative Leather Jackets </strong>
Huang gave Zuckerberg a new leather jacket that he said his wife, Lori, bought him to commemorate this year’s SIGGRAPH. He’d been wearing it for the past two hours.
Huang Surprising Highlights
Other surprise highlights in the hour-long exchange included references to the cows Zuckerberg’s raising on his ranch in Hawaii, an F-bomb drop and Zuckerberg’s style makeover. (Zuckerberg described it as “early stage.”) didn’t hold back when it came to roasting Zuckerberg — a privilege of Meta’s dependency on Nvidia for model-training hardware, perhaps.
Tomato Slicing Anecdote
At one point, gave an anecdote about Zuckerberg’s tomato slicing habits. While cooking cheesesteak sandwiches together at Huang’s house, Zuckerberg was assigned the job of cutting the tomatoes, Huang recounted.
“And so, Mark, I handed him a knife,” Huang said, “and he cuts the tomatoes. Every single one of them are perfectly sliced, to the exact millimeter. But the really interesting thing is, I was expecting all the tomatoes to be sliced and kind of stacked up, kind of like a deck of cards. But when I turned around, he said he needed another plate. And the reason for that was because all of the tomatoes he cut, none of them touched each other. Once he separates one slice of tomato from the other tomato, they shall not touch again.”
Playful Banter and Compliments Huang </strong>
Playfully chastised Zuckerberg about wanting second helpings of cheesesteak at the dinner. “Make me another cheesesteak, Jensen,” Zuckerberg retorted.
