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How Jensen Huang built Nvidia into the $3 trillion king of AI

Tae Kim’s book focuses on the company and its founder.

Jon Peddie

Nvidia and its co-founder, Jensen Huang, are the collective subject of a newly published book, The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant, by Tae Kim. The book details the early days of the company through its meteoric rise in the tech world, as well as the company’s unique culture and Huang’s collaborative style.

Book cover, The Way

Tae Kim has written an in-depth book on Nvidia and Jensen Huang titled The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant. It will be published on December 10 by W.W. Norton & Company.

Huang, Nvidia’s CEO, transformed the company from a struggling upstart into the world’s most valuable company during the past 30 years. Nvidia’s market value has reached $3.6 trillion, driven by its dominance in AI technology. Huang’s leadership style, characterized by a collaborative and innovative culture symbolized by the whiteboard, played a crucial role in the company’s success. Nvidia’s processors are well-suited for AI workloads, and the company’s early investments in AI positioned it to capitalize on the AI boom.

Despite early challenges and near-death experiences, Nvidia’s unique organizational design and work culture, known as “the Nvidia Way,” have been key to its success. The company’s culture discourages looking back and focuses on future opportunities.

Huang’s personal will and strategic vision have been instrumental in shaping Nvidia, but the company’s future post-Huang remains to be determined.

Kim started the book project in May 2023 and conducted over 100 interviews with all three Nvidia co-founders, nearly the entire senior management team in its early years, CEOs, competitors, partners, and suppliers. He was a PC gaming nerd since the 1990s, building his own gaming PCs, adding all the best 3D graphics cards. One day he got a cold email from a publisher in May of 2023 asking if he could do piece on the history of Nvidia, and he was stunned that no one had done a full book on Nvidia, so he jumped at the chance. There’s more in the book.

You can find a more expanded excerpt of it here.