As part of his visit to the UIUC campus, Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA, and his staff  met with the C³SR faculty and students on February 1, 2017. Jensen offered his vision for NVIDIA as a leading core technology company in the age of artificial intelligence.

C³SR co-directors Wen-mei Hwu and Jinjun Xiong along with C³SR faculty and students presented the C³SR vision and research activities to the NVIDIA visitors. Jensen was very actively engaged and participated with many insightful comments and questions throughout. During the discussion of the CELA (Creative Experiential Learning Advisor), Cognitive Application Builder (CAB), and Near Memory Acceleration (NMA) projects, Jensen commented that the center's projects were "sufficiently ambitious and sufficiently useful. Perfect intersection between applied and fundamental research"