An Indian-origin techie recently opened up about finally gathering the courage to leave the trillion-dollar AI giant Nvidia. Currently living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, he told the Business Insider that the decision was spurred into action after he received a single piece of advice from the company’s CEO himself, Jensen Huang.
Fret not, for this case doesn’t paint either of them in the wrong light, as it all worked out well for Sid Pardeshi in the end. The former Nvidia employee is now the co-founder and CTO of a generative AI software platform called Blitzy.
Read below what the Indian-origin techie’s journey as an intern-turned-employee-turned-student/intern-turned-founder looks like. It had its ups and downs, but ultimately Huang’s words were exactly what Pardeshi needed to get onto the path he now walks on.
Indian-origin techie’s Nvidia story: From intern to full-time
According to his personal account shared on the Business Insider platform, Pardeshi started out as an intern at the US-based technology company as an intern in January 2016. The big opportunity came knocking on his door through his university, where he was studying electrical and electronics engineering at the time.
As a gamer with knowledge about the company’s graphics chips, the then-college student landing the big break proved into being a big stepping stone for his professional graph. According to the Business Insider, the six-month journey as a Nvidia intern soon blossomed into a full-time thing, as Pardeshi landed a junior engineer role at the AI giant in Pune, India. By 2018, he was already a senior system software engineer.
However, by this time, Pardeshi and Jensen Huang remained rather far apart from their each other’s professional orbits. While the South Asian techie would catch the big boss leading quarterly all-hands meetings, Pardeshi was still very much remotely present from India at the time. Despite the physical distance between them, Sid couldn’t deny Huang’s status as a pioneer.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Juang’s advice that changed everything
It was only when Huang visited the Nvidia team in India that both their paths finally crossed. Following a team meeting, Pardeshi took his chance, reaching out to Jensen as he asked him what he should focus on to make worthwhile contributions to not just the company but also the tech world on a larger scale.
In his simple, yet meaningful, reply back then, Jenseng Huang told Pardeshi that he should commit to one area of expertise instead of eye-balling many interests. The Indian-origin techie swore by the guidance from then on, later pouring his all into artificial intelligence as it aligned with his gaming interests.
With passing time, Pardeshi witnessed the emergence of more and more avenues in the AI world. And so, began his ambitious question to “become a founder like Jensen,” as per the Business Insider.
Nvidia employee quits job to become an AI founder
The year was 2022. At the age of 28, Pardeshi quit his Nvidia job in India, and swiftly moved to Massachusetts in the US with his family. His first step to becoming an entrepreneur involved enrolling in an MSc and MBA program at Harvard. As he went back to his student ways to gain higher pursuits, he again took on an intern role at Nvidia from May 2023 to April 2024.
Down the line, he was even offered a job after his master’s. However, this time he was determined to hit the business goal, and Harvard helped him meet that end. Alongside one of his classmates at the elite school, he ended up co-founding Blitzy, an AI-powered autonomous software development platform, in 2023.
Cut to present day, Sid Pardeshi is attached to the company in the Chief Technology Officer capacity.
Even beyond the piece of guidance Huang offered him in India, Pardeshi confessed to learning a lot from the Nvidia CEO simply by the way he carried himself. Sharing yet another anecdote with the Business Insider, Pardeshi confirmed what fuelled his desire to “become a founder like Jense Huang.”
During his time as an intern in the US, Huang came up to meet the team of interns. However, his assistant kept nudging him to take a call with an important client. As per BI, Huang chose otherwise. “Let them wait,” Jensen said, as per Pardeshi’s account. “I’m talking to the future of Nvidia.”
The present day Blitzy CTO has since carried the same attitude to his company by staying connected with the team members and helping them solve problems throughout. He claims to have allocated two hours everyday for the same.