In 1997, with Nvidia "about six months of cash left" and weeks from insolvency, Jensen Huang ordered mass production of the RIVA 128 graphics chip, which had never physically existed and was tested entirely inside a simulator. Huang recalled the decision during an episode of the Acquired podcast, recorded at Nvidia’s headquarters and published in October 2023. At that time, Nvidia was worth about $1.1 trillion; today, it is worth around $4.7 trillion, having become the first company ever to top a $5 trillion valuation in October 2025. Huang explained that with only enough cash for one "tape out," the chip had to be perfect, telling engineers, "I know it's going to be perfect because if it's not we'll be out of business." To achieve this, Nvidia used emulation software, buying the inventory of a struggling company selling that tool with about half of the company's remaining cash. The emulator was painfully slow, rendering roughly a frame a minute, but allowed the team to virtually prototype the chip and catch bugs. Nvidia then skipped the prototype stage and went directly to TSMC for manufacturing.