According to SemiAnalysis, a semiconductor research institution, Yangqing Jia, who is the founder and CEO of Lepton AI and a former Vice President of System Software at NVIDIA, has stepped down from his role at NVIDIA. This move comes just a year after NVIDIA acquired Lepton AI for an estimated $700 million. Prior to this, NVIDIA had also acquired Run:ai, investing close to $2 billion in GPU cloud software stacks. The goal was to establish a computing power marketplace that would link global GPU cloud service providers with AI developers. Jia played a pivotal role in executing this strategy.

The reasons behind Jia's resignation are multifaceted. Firstly, the operational performance of DGX Lepton did not meet expectations. Secondly, NVIDIA failed to honor its commitment to open-source the core platform of Lepton by 2026, a move that contradicted Jia's open-source philosophy. Additionally, the product management culture at NVIDIA led to resources being squandered on superficial tasks, leaving core challenges unaddressed.

Earlier this month, Jia took on an advisory role at Hyperbolic, a GPU cloud service provider, with a business focus that significantly overlaps with that of DGX Lepton. This development is seen as an indication that GPU hardware monopolies face challenges in extending their dominance to the software layer, and that middleware platforms are encountering a crisis of value.