Original post
Zachary Nado#589
Zachary Nado#589
Palash@ABiggerSpalash
Geoff Hinton, before he was Geoff Hinton, once asked NVIDIA for a free GPU for his students Alex Krizhevsky and Ilya Sutskever. Nvidia declined
2:30 AM · Jun 9, 2026 · 86K Views
Anecdote reveals NVIDIA once rejected Geoff Hinton's request for a free GPU for his students Alex Krizhevsky and Ilya Sutskever
Story Overview
Years before AlexNet made waves, Geoffrey Hinton emailed Nvidia after promoting their cards to roughly a thousand machine-learning researchers at a conference, asking for one free GPU to support students Alex Krizhevsky and Ilya Sutskever on early neural-net work at Toronto. The company turned the request down, leaving the group to source hardware elsewhere for experiments that later benefited from GTX 580 cards.
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FYI
Compute shortages hit before the boom
This 2009-era anecdote captures the hardware friction facing neural-net researchers when CUDA was new and skepticism toward deep learning ran high.
Open Question
Missing pieces stay missing
Exact email date, precise wording of Nvidia's reply, and whether the ask covered one card or more are not established in the reported accounts.
Sentiment
Many users praise Nvidia for declining Geoff Hinton's free GPU request by recognizing researcher potential and holding their ground, while some criticize the asking approach or worry about overlooked emerging talent.
Pos
80.0%
Neg
20.0%
7 comments with sentiment.
Cluster Engagement
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Mikhail Parakhin@MParakhin
I remember, I was there :-) Fun fact, it wasn’t NeurIPS, it was a room they rented in the same hotel, organizing an unrelated “workshop”, because NeurIPS wouldn’t accept them - Neural Networks weren’t cool. The room was packed, though.
Palash@ABiggerSpalash
Geoff Hinton, before he was Geoff Hinton, once asked NVIDIA for a free GPU for his students Alex Krizhevsky and Ilya Sutskever. Nvidia declined
1dViews 12.7KLikes 115Bookmarks 13
Palash@ABiggerSpalash
(from Stephen Witt's wonderful book on Nvidia and Jensen, 'The Thinking Machine')
1dViews 2.2KLikes 18Bookmarks 6
Daniel Saltzberg@dargason
@ABiggerSpalash NVidia would send my PhD lab a free GPU every time a new one came out. This was back in 2008, right after CUDA was developed. NVidia was very keen on the lab adding GPU support for our popular chemical simulation package.
1dViews 1.9KLikes 22Bookmarks 2
Rocky@Rocky_T07
@ABiggerSpalash Everyone starts investing in you, once you become a brand big enough....big lesson in here...
1dViews 2.4KLikes 29Bookmarks 1
Dhivesh Joshi@Don1Corleoni
@ABiggerSpalash In 2012, he who was 64 at that time, also worked as intern in Google. Interesting story.
1dViews 2.2KLikes 18Bookmarks 1
Reyaa@snr_boost
@ABiggerSpalash Little known fact : Hinton pioneered the modern 'influencer-run CAC' model before side-questing modern Deep Learning 😏😏😏
1dViews 1.6KLikes 8
realpaulmahler@realpaulmahler
@ABiggerSpalash This is not the way to ask if you want to get free stuff from a corporation.
1dViews 1.5KLikes 3
Jamiu@jimXBldr
@ABiggerSpalash The scary part is that somewhere today, another Alex or Ilya is probably being ignored for the exact same reason.
1dViews 414Likes 3
darkseidz@darkseidzz
@ABiggerSpalash And now Jensen is hand delivering free B300 systems to Karpathy!
1dViews 366Likes 6
Alexis Gallagher@alexisgallagher
@realpaulmahler @ABiggerSpalash What is the way?
1dViews 136Likes 6
Dan Advantage@DanAdvantage
@dargason @ABiggerSpalash did the lab add said sim support?
1dViews 67
CauserEffect@TimeSnips
@ABiggerSpalash i was saying the same thing in 2012 :)
1dViews 621Likes 2
Daniel Saltzberg@dargason
@DanAdvantage @ABiggerSpalash No. Memory transfer rate was a killer.
The codebase was developed across multiple labs, pre-git. So it was dozens of semi-independent F77 modules and data structures. It would have required a dedicated rewrite. Ultimately others built MD engines from the ground-up for GPU.
1dViews 45
Pavel Stoev, M.Eng. P.Eng.@pavel_4_ai
@MParakhin Interesting. In 2004, as UofT student I asked NVIDIA for a free (RMA replacement) GeForce 2 and got it. It was to replace electrically damaged one. I still have the replacement 🫶 Jensen signed it last year.
1dViews 123Likes 2
Wilder@wilderxbt
@MParakhin packed room full of people who knew something nvidia didnt
1dViews 49Likes 2
Babatunde Onabajo@BabatundeOnabaj
@Don1Corleoni @ABiggerSpalash Everyone who starts there is an intern. They use the word differently at Google compared to the rest of the world.
1dViews 23Likes 2
Strata@ChainZenit
@MParakhin that history is actually wild. love that they held their ground.
1dViews 115
Alex YGift@Radipdegen
@MParakhin funny how nvidias "no" ended up shaping everything
1dViews 112
Rugbist@rugbist_
@MParakhin ah the classic "workshop that was definitely not a workshop" route
guess packing the room was the ultimate flex
1dViews 94
Georgy Khalin@Khalin_George
@MParakhin What made you believe back then that neural networks were promising?
1dViews 11Likes 1
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