2026-09-04
24 分钟The Economist.
Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist.
I'm Rosie Blau.
Today on the show, the changing geography of knife crime in Britain.
And remembering Frank Smith, America's longest-serving prisoner.
But first,
Few companies have grown so slowly and then so fast as Nvidia.
The chip designer whose processors power much of the world's artificial intelligence
took three decades to reach a valuation of a trillion dollars,
yet it doubled that in just nine months,
and it crossed the 5 trillion mark less than two years later,
making it the most valuable company in the world.
Problem is, when a firm is so big and so successful,
people just expect it to keep on going.
Jensen Huang, Nvidia's boss, has turned to an aggressive spree of financial engineering,
which is designed to boost demand for its chips.
Shailesh Chitnis is our global business writer.
Now, this strategy carries some risks,
and critics warn that it also has echoes of the dot-com boom of the late '90s.
Shailesh, before we get to the risks, explain what you mean by the financial engineering.