Steven Chu, the first Nobel Prize-winning scientist to join a White House cabinet, became Barack Obama's energy secretary in 2009 and had to sell Nvidia shares worth $300 million due to conflict of interest rules. Nvidia, which Chu joined when it was a small company, has seen its stock rise 22,000 percent over the past decade. He expressed concern that current budget cuts to federal science and immigration policy may hinder similar American success stories in the future.
At the time Nvidia was a small graphics company, but there were rules about conflict of interest so I had to sell my shares in 2009 when I joined government.
When Jenson Huang told me about developing this high-level chip, I said, 'If you do that, this computer will be at the heart of every supercomputer in the world.' And he did it.
Sanguine about his lost wealth, Chu's main takeaway from Nvidia is not his own misfortune. Instead, he worries that this American success story might not have been able to happen today.
Trump wants to cut science budgets by half or more and reduce the number of foreign postdocs-particularly from China. That's a problem because if you go to any major research university, you'll find about a third of ...
Nvidia's stock rising 22,000 percent in the past decade alone, Chu's stake would be worth $300 million.
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