An Nvidia co-founder’s latest bet: Making ‘Quantum Valley’ in New York
TROY, N.Y.—The co-founder of the AI chipmaker Nvidia said he chose to study at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the late 1970s because it had a state-of-the-art mainframe computer. Now, he is betting that a quantum computer at his alma mater could reinvigorate the region. Curtis Priem, 64 years old, is donating more than $75 million so RPI can have a quantum-computing system made by International Business Machines—making it the first such device on a university campus anywhere in the world.
Priem spent a decade as Nvidia’s chief technology officer. While he cashed out well before the company’s valuation topped $2 trillion, he amassed a large enough fortune to fund multimillion-dollar gifts to educational and other causes. The goal of his latest bet is to establish New York’s Hudson Valley as an epicenter of quantum-computing research in the country, he said.
His vision is to create a critical mass of talent that will lead to spinoff businesses. While school and regional officials share his optimism, the task might be tricky in an upstate New York city whose former industrial primacy faded with the detachable shirt collar. “We’ve renamed Hudson Valley as Quantum Valley," Priem said in an interview.
“It’s up to New York whether they want to become Silicon State—not just a valley." Priem was working at Sun Microsystems in 1993 when he met two friends, Jensen Huang and Chris Malachowsky, at a Denny’s restaurant in Silicon Valley. They came up with the idea for a graphics processor that would become Nvidia’s core product. Priem is credited with developing the chip’s architecture.
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