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.
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.”
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.
“This is worth more because it’s used,” Zuckerberg said.
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.”) Huang didn’t hold back when it came to roasting Zuckerberg — a privilege of Meta’s dependency on Nvidia for model-training hardware, perhaps.
“He needs an AI that doesn’t judge,” Huang said.
At one point Huang 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 but when I turned around, he said he needed another 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.”
Huang playfully chastised Zuckerberg about wanting second helpings of cheesesteak at the dinner. “Make me another cheesesteak, Jensen,” Zuckerberg retorted.
But the interview wrapped up on a more complimentary note. Huang complimented Zuckerberg’s figure.
“I think Mark is pretty buff,” he said. “Look, the guy’s pretty jacked.”
Zuckerberg, wrapping his arms around Jensen, returned the praise. “You too, man.”
