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- Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang once passed on an opportunity to buy out the chipmaker.
- SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son offered to lend him the necessary funds in 2016, Huang said.
- Huang said he regretted turning him down, while Son bemoaned selling SoftBank's Nvidia stake early.
Jensen Huang turned down the chance to buy out Nvidia, the microchip maker that's now the most valuable listed company worth $3.6 trillion.
The Nvidia CEO and cofounder revealed the missed opportunity during a conversation with SoftBank CEO and founder Masayoshi Son at the chip giant's AI summit in Tokyo on Wednesday.
Huang recalled that about a decade ago, Son told him the stock market didn't understand Nvidia's value, and his "journey of suffering" would continue for some time because he was "inventing the future."
The Japanese tech investor gave him another option, according to a Bloomberg video of the pair's comments.
Son "wanted to lend me money to buy Nvidia — all of it," Huang said. "Now I regret not taking you up," he said to Son. "That was a great idea."
Son said he made the offer a month after SoftBank acquired Arm, a chip designer, for $32 billion in the fall of 2016. Huang said he and Son spoke about merging Nvidia with Arm: "That was a good dream too."
Nvidia was trading below $2 on a split-adjusted basis at the time. It has soared more than 74-fold since to about $148 a share, reflecting the AI boom and its microchips' critical role in powering the technology.
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Huang and Son also spoke about SoftBank building a 4.9% stake in Nvidia only to sell it for about $4 billion in 2019. All else being equal, that position would have been worth more than $175 billion now.
After Huang brought up SoftBank's early exit, Son pretended to cry on his shoulder.
"It's OK," Huang jokingly consoled him. "We can cry together. Could you imagine if today, you were the largest shareholder?"
"Oh my God," Son responded.
Even if Huang regrets not taking Nvidia private, he's done well by any measure. Nvidia stock has soared nearly 200% this year, boosting his net worth to $129 billion at Tuesday's close and ranking him 11th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Son ranks 130th on the rich list with a $16.6 billion fortune, after growing more than $5 billion richer this year.