Jensen Huang jokes that Black Forest Labs CEO Robin Rombach was once his intern and will always be his intern
Jensen welcomes the CEO of Black Forest Labs. “He was once my intern. He will always be my intern.”
Context
It is a light moment, but it reflects how closely Nvidia ties itself to the startups building on its chips, including Europe's leading image model maker.
This is a secondhand clip shared by Chubby, a tech commentator who says he spent the past week traveling with Nvidia at its events in Europe. The post does not say where the clip was filmed, and the intern remark is Huang's joke rather than a verified job history.
Deep dive
On October 16, Chubby posted a clip of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang welcoming the CEO of Black Forest Labs, with the quote: He was once my intern. He will always be my intern.
The frame shows Huang in his usual black leather jacket, holding a microphone on stage in front of a sign reading Spark. The post does not name the event.
Black Forest Labs, based in Germany, makes the FLUX family of image generation models. Its cofounder and CEO is Robin Rombach, who Nvidia lists as a speaker for its GTC Berlin conference later this month. Before founding the company, Rombach and his cofounders worked on Stable Diffusion, one of the best known open image models.
Huang has been in Europe this week. He spoke with Bloomberg's Emily Chang in Berlin on October 16 about the AI stock selloff, as covered in this deck, and Nvidia has announced a series of European investments.
The clip does not show Rombach's reaction, and neither Nvidia nor Black Forest Labs has explained the intern remark.
What to expect next
Watch for any announcements involving Black Forest Labs and Nvidia at GTC Berlin, where Rombach is listed as a speaker and Huang gives a keynote on October 21.
Also watch whether Nvidia deepens its ties with European AI startups through investments or partnerships during the trip, following the stakes in French startups it announced earlier in the week. New FLUX releases optimized for Nvidia hardware would be one sign of a closer relationship.