Nvidia’s GTC conference included everything from multitrillion-dollar revenue projections, graphics technology that will make video games cheap, a grand declaration that every company needs an OpenClaw strategy, and even a robot version of Olaf, the popular snowman from Disney’s “Frozen.”
On the latest episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, TechCrunch’s Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I recapped CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote and discussed what it means for Nvidia’s future. And yes, most of our discussion focused on poor Olaf, who had to have his microphone turned off when he started rambling.
Even if the demo went perfectly, Sean might still have some reservations. Sean said these presentations always focus on the “engineering challenges” and not the “really thorny gray areas” on the social side.
“But what if the kid kicks Olaf?” asked Sean. “So will other kids who see Olaf get kicked and run over have their entire trip to Disney ruined and their brand ruined?”
Read a preview of the conversation below, edited for length and clarity.
Anthony:[CEO Jensen Huang]basically said that every company needs to have an OpenClaw strategy right now. I think this is a pretty grand statement to get attention. I think it’s also interesting for OpenClaw to be in such a transitional period.
The founders went to OpenAI. So it’s this open source project that can thrive and evolve beyond its creators, or it can fade. When a company like Nvidia invests heavily in it, it’s more likely to continue to evolve. But it will be interesting to see a year from now, whether it seems like a prescient statement or whether everyone is wondering, “Open what?”
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Kirsten: For Nvidia, it costs roughly nothing to launch something called NemoClaw, which is an open source project that we built in collaboration with the creators of OpenClaw. But they have a lot to lose if they don’t do something. When Jensen said, “Every company needs to have an OpenClaw strategy,” I translated his message to me as, “Nvidia needs to have a solution or strategy for the enterprise, because if it’s successful, it’s another way or another path for Nvidia to be part of a lot of other companies.” Therefore, doing nothing is a greater risk than doing nothing.
Sean: The real question here is why haven’t we talked about what is clearly the end goal for Nvidia and what would turn Nvidia into the first $100 trillion company, which is the Olaf robot?
Anthony: How can I forget?
Kirsten: Anthony, please go to the end of the two and a half hours and watch this.
Then Olaf’s robot comes out. This is something Jensen loves. He loves doing these demos, some of which work better than others. This is also to demonstrate Nvidia’s technology in robotics, and we don’t know if Olaf was actually speaking in real time or if it was programmed. It felt a bit programmed or like certain keywords were used.
But the best part about this song is that he had to turn off the mic at the end because he started rambling to the audience. I then went into a small passageway and was slowly lowered down. And you could see it in the video. I was still talking, but I didn’t have a microphone.
Sean: Now all we have to do is give this little robot a wheelbase. And I know the perfect founder who can provide that.
I mean, these demos are always ridiculous. I know I talked about this a little bit earlier this week, so I don’t want to talk about it too much, but this was an impressive demo until a moment when it fell a bit short.
This is another very good example of how robotics is a very interesting engineering problem, a very interesting physics problem, a very interesting integration problem, and all the rest. But this was presented as the future of Disney parks and more, in partnership with Disney. You’ll be able to walk around and see Olaf from “Frozen” and take pictures of them and everything.
But these efforts never take into account all the other things that must be considered when an event like this unfolds. There’s a very talented YouTuber named Defunctland. He made a really good video about this, about Disney’s history of trying to bring these kinds of robots, automatons, into the parks. It’s 4 hours long, but not too long.
Engineering challenges are very interesting and I enjoy looking at their history, but I always come back to the same questions. “Okay, but what happens if a kid kicks Olaf?” And will other kids who see Olaf get kicked or run over have their entire trip to Disney ruined and their brand ruined?
There are a lot of social aspects to this. It sounds silly, but this is the kind of question we’re also asking about humanoid robots. There’s so much hype about everything else, and we don’t hear a lot of conversations about the really messy gray area of the social side of these things and integrating them into people’s lives. All we really hear about is the engineering challenges. This is also really impressive.
Kirsten: I have a counteroffer, so I have to move on to the next topic. This is a job creator because Olaf has to hire a human babysitter at Disneyland, presumably dressed as Elsa or something. In fact, you can imagine that what we’re doing is creating this engineering experiment.
