The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant

Summary

A deeply reported business history of the chip-designer Nvidia―from its founding in 1993 to its recent emergence as one of the most valuable corporations in the world―explaining how the company’s culture, overseen by cofounder and CEO Jensen Huang, has powered its incredible success.

Nvidia is the darling of the age of artificial intelligence: its chips are powering the generative-AI revolution, and demand is insatiable. For all the current interest and attention, however, Nvidia is not of our time. Founded more than three decades ago in a Denny’s in East San Jose, for years it was known primarily in the then-niche world of computer gaming. In fact, the company’s leather-jacketed leader, Jensen Huang, is the longest-serving CEO in an industry marked by near constant turmoil and failure.

In The Nvidia Way, acclaimed tech writer Tae Kim draws on more than one hundred interviews―including Jensen (as he is known) and his cofounders, the two original venture capital investors, early former employees, and current senior executives―to show how Nvidia played the longest of long games, repeatedly creating new markets and outmaneuvering competitors, including the original semiconductor giant, Intel, which now finds itself well behind the upstart. Kim offers revelations at every step, among them:

• An authoritative, myth-busting account of Nvidia’s founding in 1993.

• How Nvidia managed to overcome early missteps that would have killed most start-ups.

• The benefits of Nvidia’s flat organizational structure, which allows even low-level employees to contribute to the direction of the company.

• How Jensen’s obsession with solving the Innovator’s Dilemma―the problem of an entrenched market leader falling to smaller, nimbler companies―drove him to reinvent his approach to corporate strategy.

• How Nvidia saw the coming AI wave sooner than anyone else, and how it bet its future on a technology that had not yet arrived.

A rare view into Nvidia’s distinct culture and Jensen’s management principles, The Nvidia Way is a book for our moment as well as an instant classic of business history, with enduring lessons for entrepreneurs and managers alike.