“You are entering the world at an extraordinary moment,” NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang told graduates as he delivered the keynote address at Carnegie Mellon University’s 128th commencement ceremony on Sunday. “A new industry is being born. A new era of science and discovery is beginning.”
“No generation has entered the world with more powerful tools — or greater opportunities — than you,” said Huang, addressing the assembled thousands on a rainy morning at Gesling Stadium on the university’s main campus in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. “We are all standing at the same starting line. This is your moment to help shape what comes next.”
After encouraging graduates to turn to their mothers and wish them a happy Mother’s Day, Huang drew a direct parallel between starting his career at the beginning of the PC revolution and graduates starting theirs at the beginning of the AI revolution, emphasizing that every major computing platform shift — PCs, the internet, mobile and cloud — had led to this shared moment.
“But what is about to happen now is bigger than anything before,” he said. “Because intelligence is foundational to every industry, every industry will change.”
As a result, no graduating class is better primed than the present one to press the advantage.
