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The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant
Nvidia is the darling of the age of artificial the company’s 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
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 trend of entrenched market leaders 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.
“A captivating history of one of the world’s most important companies and what made it so great. Tae Kim deftly narrates Nvidia’s incredible achievements and instructive failures, and also captures the unique philosophies, motivations, and bets of its founders, scientists, and staffers.”—Matthew Ball, best-selling author of The Building the Spatial Internet
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
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 trend of entrenched market leaders 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.
“A captivating history of one of the world’s most important companies and what made it so great. Tae Kim deftly narrates Nvidia’s incredible achievements and instructive failures, and also captures the unique philosophies, motivations, and bets of its founders, scientists, and staffers.”—Matthew Ball, best-selling author of The Building the Spatial Internet
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Published December 10, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 424 reviews
December 19, 2024
Very enjoyable. TNW contains far more "meaty" details about Nvidia's history than any other book on the market "so far".
1. Is it a book about Nvidia or Jensen Huang? Well, both. As there'd be no Nvidia without Jensen and his major influence on the organization's culture & everyday execution is essential.
2. Is there anything I've missed here? In fact, yes. There's a lot about the early days and competition against 3dfx, and there's a bit about the rise of ATI & its Radeon, even more about CUDA and industrialization of ML (& all sorts of what we know as "AI"), but ... there's very little on the role of GPUs in the early stage of blockchain (& node mining) - that has surprised me most.
3. Does TNW do well enough when it comes to capturing the essence of Nvidia's success (what's behind it)? Hmm, I think it does. And it is not that surprising - extremely hard work & dedication, agency, ownership, technical expertise, highly highly-self-critical awareness of one's own limitations & ..., and even more hard work & dedication. Well, maybe just a bit of luck as well.
4. My favorite part? Hmm, hard to say. I've definitely enjoyed the story of the early days, but I've seen it in other sources already, so I didn't learn that much from that part. The excerpt that struck me most (because it has resonated so hard with me) is JH's impatience & his famous (?) LUA - I found it so close to my way of thinking that it was almost disturbing.
Should you read this book? Yes, why not - I had fun & you'll probably have some too. Just don't treat it as a venture-building textbook (you're not Jensen) and don't try copying it literally (it will end badly ...).
1. Is it a book about Nvidia or Jensen Huang? Well, both. As there'd be no Nvidia without Jensen and his major influence on the organization's culture & everyday execution is essential.
2. Is there anything I've missed here? In fact, yes. There's a lot about the early days and competition against 3dfx, and there's a bit about the rise of ATI & its Radeon, even more about CUDA and industrialization of ML (& all sorts of what we know as "AI"), but ... there's very little on the role of GPUs in the early stage of blockchain (& node mining) - that has surprised me most.
3. Does TNW do well enough when it comes to capturing the essence of Nvidia's success (what's behind it)? Hmm, I think it does. And it is not that surprising - extremely hard work & dedication, agency, ownership, technical expertise, highly highly-self-critical awareness of one's own limitations & ..., and even more hard work & dedication. Well, maybe just a bit of luck as well.
4. My favorite part? Hmm, hard to say. I've definitely enjoyed the story of the early days, but I've seen it in other sources already, so I didn't learn that much from that part. The excerpt that struck me most (because it has resonated so hard with me) is JH's impatience & his famous (?) LUA - I found it so close to my way of thinking that it was almost disturbing.
Should you read this book? Yes, why not - I had fun & you'll probably have some too. Just don't treat it as a venture-building textbook (you're not Jensen) and don't try copying it literally (it will end badly ...).
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December 27, 2025As an ex-employee of NVIDIA, I've long had a fascination with the company and its leadership, so I was very excited about this book. Its coverage of NVIDIA's core DNA matches what I know:
- the flat structure (as a recent grad joining a 10k person company, I was shocked to find out there were only 2 levels between me and the CEO).
- Jensen's communal communication style. He never holds 1:1s and gives feedback very publicly. Someone told me: if you've never received a harsh word from Jensen, you haven't done anything meaningful.
- T5T (top 5 thing) emails. You can always tell when a founder has passed through NVIDIA when they bring this practice to their startup.
- The whiteboard culture.
- SoL (speed of light) everything.
The book also sheds lights on many aspects of the company I didn't know: the early history of the company, the GPU branding, the original Pixar demo.
However, every coin has 2 sides, and this book seems to focus entirely on the positive side. The author made a few hyperbole statements that made me pause, such as when he said that NVIDIA has solved the innovator's dilemma entirely.
While I enjoyed the book, I found it hard to follow because it reads more like a collection of facts without a coherent narrative.
- the flat structure (as a recent grad joining a 10k person company, I was shocked to find out there were only 2 levels between me and the CEO).
- Jensen's communal communication style. He never holds 1:1s and gives feedback very publicly. Someone told me: if you've never received a harsh word from Jensen, you haven't done anything meaningful.
- T5T (top 5 thing) emails. You can always tell when a founder has passed through NVIDIA when they bring this practice to their startup.
- The whiteboard culture.
- SoL (speed of light) everything.
The book also sheds lights on many aspects of the company I didn't know: the early history of the company, the GPU branding, the original Pixar demo.
However, every coin has 2 sides, and this book seems to focus entirely on the positive side. The author made a few hyperbole statements that made me pause, such as when he said that NVIDIA has solved the innovator's dilemma entirely.
While I enjoyed the book, I found it hard to follow because it reads more like a collection of facts without a coherent narrative.
December 26, 2024
For those in business, including but not limited to tech.
A great insight into the "30-year overnight success" that is Jensen Huang's Nvidia, including not just product changes, but failure, process changes, 24/7 "speed of light" demanding work culture, and innovation (including a very flat management structure that allows any employee to email the CEO and get a quick answer) to find and serve new markets. Fascinating study, albeit highly technical of Nvidia's move from making graphics chips to GPUs to parallel-processing GPUs that have become THE AI data center go-to chip.
A great insight into the "30-year overnight success" that is Jensen Huang's Nvidia, including not just product changes, but failure, process changes, 24/7 "speed of light" demanding work culture, and innovation (including a very flat management structure that allows any employee to email the CEO and get a quick answer) to find and serve new markets. Fascinating study, albeit highly technical of Nvidia's move from making graphics chips to GPUs to parallel-processing GPUs that have become THE AI data center go-to chip.
July 15, 2025
Insightful book on a company that has shown a CAGR of 33% in value since 1999: $1.000 dollar of shares bought then would have been worth $113m in 2024
The mission is the boss
The rise of NVIDIA to the most valuable company in the world has been nothing short of meteoric, and the competitive moat build by the firm goes beyond engineering prowess and software tailored to AI. The NVIDIA way shows the influence of CEO and founder Jensen Huang on the culture of the company, which steered the business away from internal politics, bureaucracy and complacency, while taking large bets that weren’t always appreciated by the market initially.
More thoughts to follow!
The mission is the boss
The rise of NVIDIA to the most valuable company in the world has been nothing short of meteoric, and the competitive moat build by the firm goes beyond engineering prowess and software tailored to AI. The NVIDIA way shows the influence of CEO and founder Jensen Huang on the culture of the company, which steered the business away from internal politics, bureaucracy and complacency, while taking large bets that weren’t always appreciated by the market initially.
More thoughts to follow!
November 13, 2024
The definitive history and overview of Nvidia.
I probably am as qualified as anyone to write this review, given that I write a semiconductor focused newsletter.
Great history / anecdotes / philosophy about Nvidia, and I think it will be an instant classic.
I probably am as qualified as anyone to write this review, given that I write a semiconductor focused newsletter.
Great history / anecdotes / philosophy about Nvidia, and I think it will be an instant classic.
December 29, 2024
Wow. Just finished reading “The Nvidia Way” by Tae Kim. Of the 200+ non-fiction business books I’ve read, this probably ranks in the top 3. A must-read for startup founders to F500 executive. Some key lessons 📖:
📈 Scaling from 0 to 10:
- Work “at the speed of light” – Your pace should be constrained only by the law of physics – not by historical norms, your competitor's speed, or internal politics. “Speed of light” is the theoretical maximum that work can be done, unconstrained by any other factors. For early-stage startups where speed is often the only real advantage over incumbents, this mindset is essential.
- Don’t spread yourself too thin – Nvidia’s early failures with the NV1 card taught them a vital lesson: overdesign and feature creep dilute focus. Doing fewer things exceptionally well beats doing many things poorly.
- Deliver feedback openly and widely – Jensen is a firm believer of constant feedback, often delivered in group settings so everyone can learn from mistakes. His philosophy: “We’re not optimizing to avoid embarrassing someone. We’re optimizing for the company to learn from our mistakes.”
- Invest in marketing – Even in a highly technical market like semiconductor, Jensen understood specs alone don’t sell. Marketing and branding mattered almost as much. One of the best moves Nvidia did was coining the term “GPU”. At the time, graphic cards were priced significantly lower than CPUs, despite being just as complex. Branding them as “GPUs” not only differentiated Nvidia’s products but also helped narrow the pricing gap.
- Culture is enduring - Building a sustainable business means investing as much effort in aligning internal culture as in external metrics like revenue or product launches. Markets and products will evolve, but a strong culture is the bedrock for long-term success.
📈 Scaling from 10 to 100:
- Keep teams lean - Aim for a team that’s large enough to do the job well but small enough to avoid unnecessary bureaucracy. Overmanagement kills agility and innovation.
- Adopt a flat organizational structure – Unlike most F500 CEOs with a handful of direct reports, Jensen has over 60. This flat hierarchy empowers employees, ensures information flows quickly, and speeds up decision-making.
- Assign a Pilot in Command (“PIC”) - Every project at Nvidia has a designated "PIC" who reports directly to Jensen and is fully accountable for its success. Functional teams like sales, engineering, and ops serve as a shared talent pool for these projects.
- Catch weak signals early - Jensen’s “5-email initiative” is a great example of how he stays connected to all levels of the company in order to catch signals early. He asks all employees to send their top 5 priorities/observations, then reads 100 of these emails to detect emerging trends early. While strong signals are easy to spot, it’s the weak ones that make the difference.
Needless to say, Nvidia's status as the world's most valuable company wasn't by pure luck...
📈 Scaling from 0 to 10:
- Work “at the speed of light” – Your pace should be constrained only by the law of physics – not by historical norms, your competitor's speed, or internal politics. “Speed of light” is the theoretical maximum that work can be done, unconstrained by any other factors. For early-stage startups where speed is often the only real advantage over incumbents, this mindset is essential.
- Don’t spread yourself too thin – Nvidia’s early failures with the NV1 card taught them a vital lesson: overdesign and feature creep dilute focus. Doing fewer things exceptionally well beats doing many things poorly.
- Deliver feedback openly and widely – Jensen is a firm believer of constant feedback, often delivered in group settings so everyone can learn from mistakes. His philosophy: “We’re not optimizing to avoid embarrassing someone. We’re optimizing for the company to learn from our mistakes.”
- Invest in marketing – Even in a highly technical market like semiconductor, Jensen understood specs alone don’t sell. Marketing and branding mattered almost as much. One of the best moves Nvidia did was coining the term “GPU”. At the time, graphic cards were priced significantly lower than CPUs, despite being just as complex. Branding them as “GPUs” not only differentiated Nvidia’s products but also helped narrow the pricing gap.
- Culture is enduring - Building a sustainable business means investing as much effort in aligning internal culture as in external metrics like revenue or product launches. Markets and products will evolve, but a strong culture is the bedrock for long-term success.
📈 Scaling from 10 to 100:
- Keep teams lean - Aim for a team that’s large enough to do the job well but small enough to avoid unnecessary bureaucracy. Overmanagement kills agility and innovation.
- Adopt a flat organizational structure – Unlike most F500 CEOs with a handful of direct reports, Jensen has over 60. This flat hierarchy empowers employees, ensures information flows quickly, and speeds up decision-making.
- Assign a Pilot in Command (“PIC”) - Every project at Nvidia has a designated "PIC" who reports directly to Jensen and is fully accountable for its success. Functional teams like sales, engineering, and ops serve as a shared talent pool for these projects.
- Catch weak signals early - Jensen’s “5-email initiative” is a great example of how he stays connected to all levels of the company in order to catch signals early. He asks all employees to send their top 5 priorities/observations, then reads 100 of these emails to detect emerging trends early. While strong signals are easy to spot, it’s the weak ones that make the difference.
Needless to say, Nvidia's status as the world's most valuable company wasn't by pure luck...
December 20, 2024
Certainly the most thorough and comprehensive history of the company so far. However, the storytelling felt flat, the narrative lacked analysis, and I finished the book feeling like I’ve just spent 5 hours reading a super long wikipedia article. Honestly not worth the time to read — you can probably get the same effect from listening to Acquired’s three-part podcast
September 16, 2025
Apparently there’s no substitute for hard work. Bummer…..
February 8, 2025
Tae Kim’s The Nvidia Way explores Nvidia’s evolution from a struggling startup to a dominant force in computing. The book covers both the technical and business challenges the company faced without oversimplification, making it valuable for both engineers and business professionals.
In its early years, Nvidia went through multiple near-collapse moments. CEO Jensen Huang is portrayed as hypercompetitive and, at times, petty. These struggles forced the company to rethink its approach, leading to a more structured release cycle aligned with the PC industry. One key advantage was Nvidia’s software strategy—backward-compatible drivers and software emulation of hardware, which gave them flexibility and a competitive edge.
CUDA’s rise as a general-purpose GPU computing (GPGPU) platform played a pivotal role in Nvidia’s success. Initially, the company was not focused on advancing parallel computing, but CUDA allowed them to build an ecosystem that strengthened their position in AI, high-performance computing, and beyond. The book explains how this transition helped Nvidia move beyond gaming into new industries.
One of Nvidia’s key strengths is its ability to identify, hire, and reward talented individuals. The company is known for maintaining strong internal alignment with its vision, avoiding the internal politics that often plague large organizations. Teams are structured fluidly around projects rather than rigid hierarchies, reducing managerial territorialism and keeping innovation at the forefront. The emphasis on whiteboarding over formal presentations encourages open discussions and problem-solving.
While the book highlights the technical brilliance and relentless drive of Nvidia’s founders and team, it also acknowledges the role of luck in their success. Nvidia capitalized on multiple industry shifts, including gaming, computational science, and AI. Surprising cryptocurrency mining and Web3, is not mentioned at all in the book.
The Nvidia Way provides a detailed look at the company’s technology, business strategy, and internal culture, offering insights into how Nvidia continues to stay ahead in a fast-moving industry.
In its early years, Nvidia went through multiple near-collapse moments. CEO Jensen Huang is portrayed as hypercompetitive and, at times, petty. These struggles forced the company to rethink its approach, leading to a more structured release cycle aligned with the PC industry. One key advantage was Nvidia’s software strategy—backward-compatible drivers and software emulation of hardware, which gave them flexibility and a competitive edge.
CUDA’s rise as a general-purpose GPU computing (GPGPU) platform played a pivotal role in Nvidia’s success. Initially, the company was not focused on advancing parallel computing, but CUDA allowed them to build an ecosystem that strengthened their position in AI, high-performance computing, and beyond. The book explains how this transition helped Nvidia move beyond gaming into new industries.
One of Nvidia’s key strengths is its ability to identify, hire, and reward talented individuals. The company is known for maintaining strong internal alignment with its vision, avoiding the internal politics that often plague large organizations. Teams are structured fluidly around projects rather than rigid hierarchies, reducing managerial territorialism and keeping innovation at the forefront. The emphasis on whiteboarding over formal presentations encourages open discussions and problem-solving.
While the book highlights the technical brilliance and relentless drive of Nvidia’s founders and team, it also acknowledges the role of luck in their success. Nvidia capitalized on multiple industry shifts, including gaming, computational science, and AI. Surprising cryptocurrency mining and Web3, is not mentioned at all in the book.
The Nvidia Way provides a detailed look at the company’s technology, business strategy, and internal culture, offering insights into how Nvidia continues to stay ahead in a fast-moving industry.
January 22, 2025
Over the past year, I’ve read books about Netflix, Tesla, Uber, Apple - and now Nvidia. I’ve realized that these company biographies are some of my favorite reads. It’s fascinating to learn how companies are founded, how they grow, struggle, and manage their internal politics and processes. The Nvidia Way is no exception. What makes it even more enjoyable is the nostalgia of the company’s early days and their first video cards, paired with the excitement of their recent advancements in AI. A great read for anyone curious about the journey of innovative companies.
December 13, 2024
A well-written and definitive account on why and how Nvidia succeeded and is one of the most valuable companies in the world today.
Jensen Huang is one of today's rare breeds in understanding both technology and business needs. He has been the CEO for Nvidia since the beginning. I have worked in many "tech" companies and to put it mildly, most of my former work colleagues would never stand a chance or even survive working for a culture like in Nvidia. Excellence is expected at every level and 70 hour work weeks are considered the norm. In return you will be doing revolutionary and exceptional work and be well rewarded. In fact how Nvidia works is what is considered I consider the antithesis of most companies. There are no powerpoint slides used whatsoever, and white boards are used everywhere instead. Exceptional talent is recognised (and poached) and well compensated to retain them. Smart people want to work with smart people, and not average people. Industry turnover in Nvida is only 3% compared to 13% in the tech industry. Jensen also won't hesitate to call you out and humiliate you in front of everyone if you did a terrible or lacklustre job. Mediocrity or coasting does not happen in Nvidia. There is tremendous transparency and he knows everyone by name even though it's now a very big company. Everything is expected to adopt "the speed of light" mindset.
Reading this book highlights why Nvidia will be *the* leader in the GPU space for years to come. They have come a long way to where they are today, stumbling and nearly becoming bankrupt in the early days but overcame all hurdles through sheer will and some luck.
I can highly recommend this book if you're interested in the inner workings of the Jensen way because Jensen IS Nvidia.
Jensen Huang is one of today's rare breeds in understanding both technology and business needs. He has been the CEO for Nvidia since the beginning. I have worked in many "tech" companies and to put it mildly, most of my former work colleagues would never stand a chance or even survive working for a culture like in Nvidia. Excellence is expected at every level and 70 hour work weeks are considered the norm. In return you will be doing revolutionary and exceptional work and be well rewarded. In fact how Nvidia works is what is considered I consider the antithesis of most companies. There are no powerpoint slides used whatsoever, and white boards are used everywhere instead. Exceptional talent is recognised (and poached) and well compensated to retain them. Smart people want to work with smart people, and not average people. Industry turnover in Nvida is only 3% compared to 13% in the tech industry. Jensen also won't hesitate to call you out and humiliate you in front of everyone if you did a terrible or lacklustre job. Mediocrity or coasting does not happen in Nvidia. There is tremendous transparency and he knows everyone by name even though it's now a very big company. Everything is expected to adopt "the speed of light" mindset.
Reading this book highlights why Nvidia will be *the* leader in the GPU space for years to come. They have come a long way to where they are today, stumbling and nearly becoming bankrupt in the early days but overcame all hurdles through sheer will and some luck.
I can highly recommend this book if you're interested in the inner workings of the Jensen way because Jensen IS Nvidia.
February 2, 2025
A great overview of both Nvidia's history and Jensen Huang's leadership style.
January 28, 2025
Really inspiring how they got there! Don't believe in the work minimal 60 hours a week attitude. But Jensen had some really good principles worth reading about!
September 28, 2025
If you enjoy Isaacson's biographies, you'll probably enjoy this one. Personally, I detest his uncritical look at recent historical figures and don't enjoy Isaacson's writing at all. Tae Kim is perhaps worse. His fawning adoration for his idol, Jensen Huang transpires on every single page. I got fed up with the gushing love and dropped the book about halfway though. I mean I know how it ends right? Trillionnaire sells tech to terrorist countries in Middle East, what could go wrong? Anyway, not my cuppa.
December 28, 2024
American technology company Nvidia (founded 1993) is one of the latest Silicon Valley companies to rise to massive prominence in the mid-2020s through its dominance in supplying the hardware and software powering generative artificial intelligence. In The Nvidia Way, tech journalist Tae Kim explores the history of the company, particularly its co-founder, president, and long-time hard-charging CEO Jensen Huang. This is an interesting read for those interested in business and/or technology, as like practically all companies, there have been many ups and downs and key decision points that could have easily changed everything. Kim conducted extensive interviews with Nvidia personnel over the years, and this book comes off as largely pro-Jensen Huang (basically, the SteveJobsification of Huang).
Further reading: technology and business
The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI by Fei-Fei Li (more of a memoir, but an interesting parallel trajectory re: Li's founding of ImageNet; Li features briefly toward the end of this book)
Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company and Career by Andy Grove
Tim Cook: The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level by Leander Kahney
The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Mainstream by Amy Webb
The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler
My statistics:
Book 316 for 2024
Book 1919 cumulatively
Further reading: technology and business
The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI by Fei-Fei Li (more of a memoir, but an interesting parallel trajectory re: Li's founding of ImageNet; Li features briefly toward the end of this book)
Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points that Challenge Every Company and Career by Andy Grove
Tim Cook: The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level by Leander Kahney
The Signals Are Talking: Why Today’s Fringe Is Tomorrow’s Mainstream by Amy Webb
The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler
My statistics:
Book 316 for 2024
Book 1919 cumulatively
February 19, 2025
This book took me back to my early computer days, when I was thrilled by 3Dfx ads in the magazine CD-Action...
What I liked about the story the most is the realization that Nvidia employees often worked late and on weekends. I admire their dedication to work around the clock. There were personal sacrifices of course, but in the end these factors might have been the ones that helped Nvidia get where they are right now!
Another cool story was about the difference between technical CEOs like Jensen Huang, and other CEOs in big companies, engineering FTW!:)
Overall, it was a very interesting history to grab, both from nostalgia and learning perspectives!
What I liked about the story the most is the realization that Nvidia employees often worked late and on weekends. I admire their dedication to work around the clock. There were personal sacrifices of course, but in the end these factors might have been the ones that helped Nvidia get where they are right now!
Another cool story was about the difference between technical CEOs like Jensen Huang, and other CEOs in big companies, engineering FTW!:)
Overall, it was a very interesting history to grab, both from nostalgia and learning perspectives!
March 4, 2025
This book is a ballad for Jensen Huang.
Everything that he is doing is great. Pushing employees for 60+ hour weeks - great. Being blunt with everyone - great. Working on holidays while his kids are playing - great.
While I am not here to judge - everyone has their own preferences, but for me, European, this sounds like an attempt to "make america great again" type of book in line with Sergey Brin's urge to "spend at least workdays and 60 hours in office". Perverted view of the world and incentives.
I did learn a bit of Nvidia's history from this book, so I glad I read it, but it's not a balanced take.
Everything that he is doing is great. Pushing employees for 60+ hour weeks - great. Being blunt with everyone - great. Working on holidays while his kids are playing - great.
While I am not here to judge - everyone has their own preferences, but for me, European, this sounds like an attempt to "make america great again" type of book in line with Sergey Brin's urge to "spend at least workdays and 60 hours in office". Perverted view of the world and incentives.
I did learn a bit of Nvidia's history from this book, so I glad I read it, but it's not a balanced take.
January 28, 2025
Jensen's my second favorite billionaire. What a king we love our boy.
January 18, 2026
This is the kind of business book that lands differently depending on what you’re looking for. If you want a glossy “AI miracle” story, this probably isn't it. Instead (and what I found more interesting) is a study in how an “overnight success” is actually a decades-long commitment to the unsexy work: platform building, technical excellence, and leadership that avoids complacency.
The book is about how Nvidia became Nvidia —not just a GPU company, but the default computing platform powering modern AI by consistently thinking in systems: hardware + software + developer ecosystem + long-term strategy. The recurring message is that Nvidia didn’t merely ride waves; it invested early and relentlessly enough to help create the waves.
Key takeaways for me -
Platforms beat products. The book makes the case that Nvidia’s biggest advantage wasn’t making faster chips—it was in building an ecosystem that made those chips the easiest and most attractive choice for developers and researchers.
It’s a leadership book disguised as a company story. Jensen Huang comes across as demanding, deeply technical, and unusually long-range in his thinking. The portrait here is less “visionary genius” and more “high-standards operator who refuses to let the organization drift into mediocrity.”
Reinvention isn’t occasional—it’s cultural. One of the more compelling threads is how Nvidia repeatedly reoriented itself (gaming → compute → AI) and treated reinvention as a normal operating process.
Leadership lessons include:
* invest ahead of obvious ROI
* insist on clarity (even when it’s uncomfortable)
* keep standards high without drowning in bureaucracy
* build capabilities that compound over time
Obviously, the book is very pro-Nvidia and pro-Huang, which makes for a good story but it does feel like there was more that could have been said to counter the very "all good here" feeling.
That said, it is a good read for those in tech, particularly tech leadership, or those interested in Nvidia's history and business approach. It’s not perfect—there’s some obvious hero story and a few areas that could have benefited from a critical eye —but it’s still a worthwhile read, especially if you’re interested in leadership and execution at scale.
The book is about how Nvidia became Nvidia —not just a GPU company, but the default computing platform powering modern AI by consistently thinking in systems: hardware + software + developer ecosystem + long-term strategy. The recurring message is that Nvidia didn’t merely ride waves; it invested early and relentlessly enough to help create the waves.
Key takeaways for me -
Platforms beat products. The book makes the case that Nvidia’s biggest advantage wasn’t making faster chips—it was in building an ecosystem that made those chips the easiest and most attractive choice for developers and researchers.
It’s a leadership book disguised as a company story. Jensen Huang comes across as demanding, deeply technical, and unusually long-range in his thinking. The portrait here is less “visionary genius” and more “high-standards operator who refuses to let the organization drift into mediocrity.”
Reinvention isn’t occasional—it’s cultural. One of the more compelling threads is how Nvidia repeatedly reoriented itself (gaming → compute → AI) and treated reinvention as a normal operating process.
Leadership lessons include:
* invest ahead of obvious ROI
* insist on clarity (even when it’s uncomfortable)
* keep standards high without drowning in bureaucracy
* build capabilities that compound over time
Obviously, the book is very pro-Nvidia and pro-Huang, which makes for a good story but it does feel like there was more that could have been said to counter the very "all good here" feeling.
That said, it is a good read for those in tech, particularly tech leadership, or those interested in Nvidia's history and business approach. It’s not perfect—there’s some obvious hero story and a few areas that could have benefited from a critical eye —but it’s still a worthwhile read, especially if you’re interested in leadership and execution at scale.
March 7, 2025
A fascinating case study on Jensen Huang. He really does seem to be an extraordinarily hard working person.
I had a lecturer who was an employee at Nvidia and he would occasionally do some things that felt a little off putting. (If he called on someone and they gave the wrong answer and tried laughing off the mistake, he'd ask "why are you laughing? What's funny about this?") Definitely asshole behavior but he really is a decent guy. He genuinely wanted to teach us well and make us the best students we could be. After reading this book, it now all makes complete sense to me. My lecturer was just really integrated in the culture at Nvidia, or rather, the Nvidia Way. Looking back it feels like I personally got to experience a bit of that culture, which I think was a good experience.
I would love to feel the same intense feeling of purpose and drive towards a goal like jenson does, but I think I would immediately suffer from burnout from lack of work-life balance. Big respect for this guy's work ethic.
I had a lecturer who was an employee at Nvidia and he would occasionally do some things that felt a little off putting. (If he called on someone and they gave the wrong answer and tried laughing off the mistake, he'd ask "why are you laughing? What's funny about this?") Definitely asshole behavior but he really is a decent guy. He genuinely wanted to teach us well and make us the best students we could be. After reading this book, it now all makes complete sense to me. My lecturer was just really integrated in the culture at Nvidia, or rather, the Nvidia Way. Looking back it feels like I personally got to experience a bit of that culture, which I think was a good experience.
I would love to feel the same intense feeling of purpose and drive towards a goal like jenson does, but I think I would immediately suffer from burnout from lack of work-life balance. Big respect for this guy's work ethic.
January 10, 2026
(Audiobook)
Solid overview of NVIDIA’s history and keys to success.
I thought the most insightful part was to see how NVIDIA succeeded first by delivering the best version of exactly what the customer wanted. Over time, they started to anticipate and even create new markets - their dominance in computing hardware for the AI rush was not an accident but the result of decades of “speed of light” execution and vision.
Much of this book was the typical CEO myth-making around founder Jensen Huang (80-hour work-weeks and answering emails at the playground). Jensen is outrageously competitive like most of the business people and athletes we idolize.
Solid overview of NVIDIA’s history and keys to success.
I thought the most insightful part was to see how NVIDIA succeeded first by delivering the best version of exactly what the customer wanted. Over time, they started to anticipate and even create new markets - their dominance in computing hardware for the AI rush was not an accident but the result of decades of “speed of light” execution and vision.
Much of this book was the typical CEO myth-making around founder Jensen Huang (80-hour work-weeks and answering emails at the playground). Jensen is outrageously competitive like most of the business people and athletes we idolize.
October 17, 2025
A great technical and business narrative wrapped into one. Essentially, there is no substitute for hard work, and really truly believing in your vision. Either really motivated me, or really demotivated me. Can't tell yet.
July 29, 2025
A love letter to Jensen. Recommend to anyone that wants to know more about the mindset behind one of the biggest companies nowadays
July 12, 2025
There many books about the companies, but this is by far the best one. Very unconventional, going against some beliefs like that flat structure could not work in big companies or positive feedback only, while re-enforcing idea like a true care about a company and its employees. A must-read for any person in management in my opinion.
December 16, 2024
Exactly what a business biography should be.
December 11, 2024
Gripping read, insightful about how Nvidia's culture and hard work of the employees has enabled their success.
July 9, 2025
3 sao thôi. Chả hiểu kiểu gì mà Nhã Nam mất 8 tháng để cho ra lò, trong khi chất lượng dịch không mê, hơi kém.
Cuốn này yếu về nhiều mặt. Nói chung thì nó là 1 cuốn sách mang phong cách kể chuyện tốt, có pacing ok, nhưng hết rồi.
Nếu so với cuốn Nvidia the thinking machine thì kém rất nhiều. Đặc biệt là chuyện CUDA và tiến vào AI, câu chuyện mà độc giả (là mình) quan tâm và cũng là thứ thời sự hơn thì viết quá kém.
Những phần về tương lai với khi AI lên ngôi, cũng chẳng nói gì. Cái này tệ, rất tệ.
Rồi mình cho rằng sách có nhiều phân tích dở tệ. Ví như nói về cuốn Innovator's dilemma, mà lại đi phân tích về cách dùng cho những phân khúc card cấp thấp, trong khi tiến vào AI mới là cái rõ nhất tinh thần thì không nhắc gì (btw đọc thì có vẻ tác giả ko hiểu cuốn kia lắm?)
Nói chung cũng mua vui được vài trống canh. Nhưng đọc Nvidia the thinking machine hay và bổ ích hơn.
Cuốn này yếu về nhiều mặt. Nói chung thì nó là 1 cuốn sách mang phong cách kể chuyện tốt, có pacing ok, nhưng hết rồi.
Nếu so với cuốn Nvidia the thinking machine thì kém rất nhiều. Đặc biệt là chuyện CUDA và tiến vào AI, câu chuyện mà độc giả (là mình) quan tâm và cũng là thứ thời sự hơn thì viết quá kém.
Những phần về tương lai với khi AI lên ngôi, cũng chẳng nói gì. Cái này tệ, rất tệ.
Rồi mình cho rằng sách có nhiều phân tích dở tệ. Ví như nói về cuốn Innovator's dilemma, mà lại đi phân tích về cách dùng cho những phân khúc card cấp thấp, trong khi tiến vào AI mới là cái rõ nhất tinh thần thì không nhắc gì (btw đọc thì có vẻ tác giả ko hiểu cuốn kia lắm?)
Nói chung cũng mua vui được vài trống canh. Nhưng đọc Nvidia the thinking machine hay và bổ ích hơn.
March 14, 2025
This is a detailed description of the origin and development of the major chip and software designer Nividia. It is endless tech jargon, acronyms and an unrelenting ode of praise to the principle founder and CEO Jensen. The drama, hype , megalomania and intensity of this industry while developing better graphics for computer games and ultimately providing the tech needed for AI is so over the top and self congratulatory that it becomes tiresome. The author collects quotes from Jensen like he is a business philosophy genius when he is really an extremely smart but reactive business man, not acting from principles as much as sharp and accurate situational analysis. I learned nothing about this area from this book.
April 11, 2025
1. The Founder’s Edge
• Jensen Huang = NVIDIA. His immigrant roots, relentless drive, and formative early struggles shaped a no-fear, no-excuses leadership style.
• He views hardship as the price of greatness: suffering builds conviction and capability.
2. Early Chaos → Foundational Culture
• NV1’s failure (a jack-of-all-trades product) nearly killed the company — taught them to focus on doing fewer things extremely well.
• Surviving near-bankruptcy instilled urgency, humility, and Jensen’s favorite motivator: fear.
3. Reinvention Through Relentless Execution
• Driver-before-silicon mindset: inverted engineering process to prioritize speed and agility.
• Organizational restructuring: broke the 2-year industry cadence by pushing 6-month cycles.
• Culture of feedback over praise: constant iteration, radical candor, and 60 direct reports.
4. Product Strategy + Market Positioning = Moat
• Coined “GPU” to reposition a commodity chip as a platform category — marketing as leverage.
• “Use the whole cow” pricing strategy (binning) turned manufacturing inefficiencies into product segmentation and ASP lift.
5. CUDA – The Compounding Moat
• CUDA wasn’t just software — it was a developer lock-in strategy that enabled AI, bio, and HPC to run on NVIDIA.
• Hiring Bill Dally aligned NVIDIA’s technical roadmap with the needs of future ML models.
6. Inflection Points
• 2006: G80 + CUDA launched a new platform.
• 2012: AlexNet + GPUs won ImageNet — the spark of the AI era.
• 2019: Mellanox acquisition cemented end-to-end compute and networking leadership.
• Ray Tracing + DLSS: sustained GPU advantage and developer lock-in.
7. Vision Over Short-Term Optimization
• Huang resisted analyst pressure during CUDA investment years — saw digital biology and AI as long games.
• Embraced bold product bets and new markets (Apple, Xbox) despite overwhelming odds.
Raw notes:
The nvidia way
- Jensen Huang and Nvidia are so interlinked at this point
- Everything comes down to never becoming complacent and doing everything to the best of our ability
- If you want success jensen wishes you hardship and struggle because that’s where you find it along with a lil bit of luck
- He was an immigrant whose family gave up everything to send him to a boarding school in Kentucky but it turned out to be a reform school for troubled kids. Jensen viewed this experience as giving him his no fear attitude his Roomate was intimidating and full of scars from stab wounds but they became friends and he taught him to read. The key is to gain confidence as a child to see you can do anything with effort
- His parents moved to the USA and he worked at Dennys to be able to pay for his table tennis travel he was relentless in his appreciation and focus embracing all the suck
- Worked at AMD and got his graduate degree in Electrical engineering over the course of 8 years then joined LSI where he met Curtis Priem and Chris Makachowsky when they worked together on the GX accelerator a collaboration with sun microsystem that was done behind Curtis and Chris boss. Curtis was the lead technical guy while Chris was the guy doint the work and getting it all on paper. Jensen was their counterpart at LSI making sure what they were building would work with the hardware and business wise. The three of them succeeded GX was a success Jensen got promoted but sun microsystem became too beurcratic so Curtis and Chris started talking to Jensen about maybe starting their own Graphic chips company. Jensen took a shot when he saw the business could scale to $50m in sales. So it began in a Denny “nvidia” comes envidia because they want to make their competitors jealous
- They all quit their job but it was not so simple they debated about who would quit first because of their wives. They slowly started the company and because of the reputation they built they had a good chance of getting funding from Sequoia and Sutter Hill this led to them hiring 20 folks and get an office. They were going to focus on a separate graphics chip to address the gaming market.
- Their funding pitches were a mess it was a pure bet on the people as the market and business model was unproven
- Once they got the company going they were focused on making a graphics card with sound improvements too called the NV1
- Jensen was tasked with leading the company CEO and Chris and Curtis with engineering
- They got a deal with sega to develop nv2 for the next console after the sega genesis
- But nv1 bombed because memory prices declined a ton and nv1 had stingy memory and doom also was very incompatible
- The over designed the card and the sound broke their business
- It’s better to do a few things well than a Swiss Army knife
- Cash crisis given the failure of nv1
- How would you position this? The most important question
- Sega pulled out of nv2 but paid 1m for a clause in the contract
- Nvidia had to layoff 60 of 100 people given the poor sales
- 3D Effects Voodoo graphic came into the market a competitor that was doing what silicon graphic $8500 workstation
- They also had quake to show off as a killer app - given nvidia was such a mess they wanted to acquire them but said fuck it let’s acquire them when they go bankrupt
- Nv3 was all in they had no way to get additional vc funding and only 9 months to get to market
- Nv3 was an astounding result in terms of the benchmark the competitors were shocked and possibly dead
- Nv3 saved the company
- Fire fast and work hard - Jensen told employees when asked about work life balance olympians get up early to work too it’s all about becoming the best and surviving as a team. Most move fast to be the competition
- Everything is about the speed of light and reengineering the chip development process - making drivers before the chip is manufactured
- They hired a ton of competitor Jensen worked everyday on 9am to 12am
- Fear and anxiety was Jensen favorite tool - he would tell his employees we are 30 days from going out of business
- Intel came out with a competitor graphic card in 1997 this was terrifying for nvidia - intel was out to get them. Jensen told them we need to kill intel 860x larger than them.
- Jensen was insanely competitive natural drive and fear of extinction loomed over him
- The fab they had in Europe was a mess and they needed another vendor TSMC comes in - Jensen and Chung (ceo of tsmc) became super close.
- The production line had some issues so they turned the office into a testing facility hiring a bunch of immigrants and low skill workers (blue coats) to do testing - there was a class divide beteeen the engineers and blue coats - Jensen quelled this by a staff wide email saying we need these people they are saving us given the production issue
- Nvidia ipo put on hold in 1998 given the challenges with Asia market falling out and this led to a cash crunch. Jensen asked bridge financing from its largest competitors with convertible feature for their future IPO
- Market dynamic of 2 year leadership in graphic market why? PC refresh, 18 month design cycle for new chips
- The conclusion was we need to do 6 month cycles reorganizing the engineering teams - the software was also important because it let them emulate the hardware. Priem’s innovation was critical here
- Backward compatibility for their driver
- 3d fx sued nvidia but they got screwed by not buying them because their chips would lag nvidia by a year
- 3d fx went bankrupt given they bet it all in 2001 the employees that joined nvidia found out that it was hard work and culture that created a competitive advantage
- Jensen Rough justice philosophy business relationship is rough not flat you go up and down and justice in that it should 50/50 over time
- IPO raised 42m which allowed them to take a brief breathe
- Xbox - Microsoft was partnering with gigapixel but nvidia would not give up pushing them to get into the market with Microsoft - nvidia is easier to develop said developers. $200m to develop the new Xbox nvidia’s chip from Microsoft.
- Preem started having a falling out around this time because he was thinking about himself and his software architecture versus seeing it as a collective he still worked like it was a small company.
- $387m raise in convertible and equity
- Innovator dilemma - technology has a profound cycle because innovation always brings low cost players into the market that may be in markets to small to notice by the large players
- Intel was being smart with their manufacturing by selling the defective chip that have slower clock speed at a lower price range increasing their yield on the manufacturing progress
- Nvidia saw that they could use the cards that were malfunction to capture the lower market - create 4 or 5 products and increase asp by using multiple lines - this approach is called using the whole cow - Jensen knew he had a permanent target on his back
- Marketing positioning matters geforce 256 was their follow up to the reava 128 they need to find a way to come up with a way to sell this bigger chip - graphic cards felt like a peripheral so how do you sell it to the market use GPU language to command a higher price - engineers pushed back but the marketer pushed forward it was a resounding success even though the marketing was hyperbole this highlights the importance of being bold and they were messing with their competitors by hanging an advertising on the highway to their competitors company 3d fx.
- Relentless vision, tireless execution and paranoia led the company to new heights reaching 1b in sales in 2001
- Selling to apple - they realized the sell to apple needed a sentimental demo so using Luxo Jr as a showcase for geforce 3 launch and showcasing the real-time rendering blew Steve jobs mind at the end of the meeting jobs said they should do something about laptops because ATI was killing them to which diskin said I think you are wrong and explained that nvidia could do better performance at laptops - this led to 85% of market share of apple
- Xbox revenue of $1.8b and secured contract of apple laptop - this led to impressive financial growth and too many spinning plates for management. While this was happening ATI acquired RX a small graphic company that came out of SGI and got the deal with Nintendo on GC.
- Nv30 was a failure because of the organization challenges and all the spinning plates - ATI took full advantage - nvidia stock fell 80% by then after this failure Jensen vowed not to repeat the same mistake it is acknowledged that if Jensen was in the position of ATI he would of bankrupted nvidia by undercutting their prices but luckily their competitor didn't push which led to nvidia restructuring their teams to make sure the nv30 never happened again
- The rise of the GPUs was started by UNC chapel hill who was using gpus to study physics and weathers. This was the second order use to make progress in understanding protein folding - GPGPU.org - gpus are better at multiple operation than CPUs
- Nv50 (g80 2006) was being developed around this because Jensen saw how software could bring wider application to their GPU. CUDA was everything it is a representation of the hardware through software. Face chicken and egg problem because you need developers to build on it. They made CUDA available to everyone and saturating the market. This brought down their Gross margins excaberated by the great financial crisis of 08 but Jensen saw the vision of CUDA and remained steadfast in his approach of capturing the opportunity.
- G80 was a sale failure but Jensen sold the vision of what it could be in the future medical field etc. Analyst kept asking about short term financials as they usually do not seeing the bigger picture.
- It was all about reaching a new market biosciences which could be an astronomical opportunity
- Ps3 open folding project - led to a proof of concept to show what could be done for the medical field and the beuracoracy of limited super computer time. Students and scientist now could do full testing in very limited GPUs for making CUDA more accessible.
- Always understand your customer more than they know themselves
- Cuda is the moat creating a network effect for the software - 5m developers now
- Jensen would chew everyone out because feedback is learning - PUA technique a guard against mediocrity praise does nothing
- Everyday Jensen tells himself he sucks - everything comes down to themselves - he thinks flat structure would of been better attracting the best talent. Pyramid does not work for attracting excellence. 60 direct reports with minimum face to face. The boss is the vision which is the strategic vision. PIC pilot in command to give accountability.
- Top 5 action items from each division to understand the softer signals
- No ppt focus on ideas and whiteboard to display logic
- Cuda becomes a bigger moat when Jensen Huang hired Bill Dally who was a former professor at MIT and Stanford and this led to bill being able to set the technical roadmap for what ai models needed to flourish in terms of compute and memory and design the hardware and software stck to support it
- Alexnet in 2012 the image generation competition that was won by two gpu was the inflection point massive training data from youtube, plus gpu design and cuda software.
- Enter starboard the activist investor in 2013 they saw nvidia as undervalued with cash of 3billion and a TEV of 8billion so they built up a position of 70m dollars people in the company worried about the activist pressure. Led to stock buybacks which grew the shares 20%.
- Mellanox provided high speed networking products starboard invested and criticized them told them they need to sell. Nvidia joined the bid intel, scionix. Ai required networking this was pivotal. Computing would come off the local. Infintiband has the best networking it was the great deal. $7b deal now doing $12b of revenue
- The company was shifting from a pure focus on operational excellence to a focus on long term competitive advantages by focusing on ray tracing and DLSS locking devs further into their ecosystem and building on their strengths through CUDA and the AI stack to outperform their competitors in AMD and intel
- Digital biology as the future of nvidia generating digital medicine simulation
• Jensen Huang = NVIDIA. His immigrant roots, relentless drive, and formative early struggles shaped a no-fear, no-excuses leadership style.
• He views hardship as the price of greatness: suffering builds conviction and capability.
2. Early Chaos → Foundational Culture
• NV1’s failure (a jack-of-all-trades product) nearly killed the company — taught them to focus on doing fewer things extremely well.
• Surviving near-bankruptcy instilled urgency, humility, and Jensen’s favorite motivator: fear.
3. Reinvention Through Relentless Execution
• Driver-before-silicon mindset: inverted engineering process to prioritize speed and agility.
• Organizational restructuring: broke the 2-year industry cadence by pushing 6-month cycles.
• Culture of feedback over praise: constant iteration, radical candor, and 60 direct reports.
4. Product Strategy + Market Positioning = Moat
• Coined “GPU” to reposition a commodity chip as a platform category — marketing as leverage.
• “Use the whole cow” pricing strategy (binning) turned manufacturing inefficiencies into product segmentation and ASP lift.
5. CUDA – The Compounding Moat
• CUDA wasn’t just software — it was a developer lock-in strategy that enabled AI, bio, and HPC to run on NVIDIA.
• Hiring Bill Dally aligned NVIDIA’s technical roadmap with the needs of future ML models.
6. Inflection Points
• 2006: G80 + CUDA launched a new platform.
• 2012: AlexNet + GPUs won ImageNet — the spark of the AI era.
• 2019: Mellanox acquisition cemented end-to-end compute and networking leadership.
• Ray Tracing + DLSS: sustained GPU advantage and developer lock-in.
7. Vision Over Short-Term Optimization
• Huang resisted analyst pressure during CUDA investment years — saw digital biology and AI as long games.
• Embraced bold product bets and new markets (Apple, Xbox) despite overwhelming odds.
Raw notes:
The nvidia way
- Jensen Huang and Nvidia are so interlinked at this point
- Everything comes down to never becoming complacent and doing everything to the best of our ability
- If you want success jensen wishes you hardship and struggle because that’s where you find it along with a lil bit of luck
- He was an immigrant whose family gave up everything to send him to a boarding school in Kentucky but it turned out to be a reform school for troubled kids. Jensen viewed this experience as giving him his no fear attitude his Roomate was intimidating and full of scars from stab wounds but they became friends and he taught him to read. The key is to gain confidence as a child to see you can do anything with effort
- His parents moved to the USA and he worked at Dennys to be able to pay for his table tennis travel he was relentless in his appreciation and focus embracing all the suck
- Worked at AMD and got his graduate degree in Electrical engineering over the course of 8 years then joined LSI where he met Curtis Priem and Chris Makachowsky when they worked together on the GX accelerator a collaboration with sun microsystem that was done behind Curtis and Chris boss. Curtis was the lead technical guy while Chris was the guy doint the work and getting it all on paper. Jensen was their counterpart at LSI making sure what they were building would work with the hardware and business wise. The three of them succeeded GX was a success Jensen got promoted but sun microsystem became too beurcratic so Curtis and Chris started talking to Jensen about maybe starting their own Graphic chips company. Jensen took a shot when he saw the business could scale to $50m in sales. So it began in a Denny “nvidia” comes envidia because they want to make their competitors jealous
- They all quit their job but it was not so simple they debated about who would quit first because of their wives. They slowly started the company and because of the reputation they built they had a good chance of getting funding from Sequoia and Sutter Hill this led to them hiring 20 folks and get an office. They were going to focus on a separate graphics chip to address the gaming market.
- Their funding pitches were a mess it was a pure bet on the people as the market and business model was unproven
- Once they got the company going they were focused on making a graphics card with sound improvements too called the NV1
- Jensen was tasked with leading the company CEO and Chris and Curtis with engineering
- They got a deal with sega to develop nv2 for the next console after the sega genesis
- But nv1 bombed because memory prices declined a ton and nv1 had stingy memory and doom also was very incompatible
- The over designed the card and the sound broke their business
- It’s better to do a few things well than a Swiss Army knife
- Cash crisis given the failure of nv1
- How would you position this? The most important question
- Sega pulled out of nv2 but paid 1m for a clause in the contract
- Nvidia had to layoff 60 of 100 people given the poor sales
- 3D Effects Voodoo graphic came into the market a competitor that was doing what silicon graphic $8500 workstation
- They also had quake to show off as a killer app - given nvidia was such a mess they wanted to acquire them but said fuck it let’s acquire them when they go bankrupt
- Nv3 was all in they had no way to get additional vc funding and only 9 months to get to market
- Nv3 was an astounding result in terms of the benchmark the competitors were shocked and possibly dead
- Nv3 saved the company
- Fire fast and work hard - Jensen told employees when asked about work life balance olympians get up early to work too it’s all about becoming the best and surviving as a team. Most move fast to be the competition
- Everything is about the speed of light and reengineering the chip development process - making drivers before the chip is manufactured
- They hired a ton of competitor Jensen worked everyday on 9am to 12am
- Fear and anxiety was Jensen favorite tool - he would tell his employees we are 30 days from going out of business
- Intel came out with a competitor graphic card in 1997 this was terrifying for nvidia - intel was out to get them. Jensen told them we need to kill intel 860x larger than them.
- Jensen was insanely competitive natural drive and fear of extinction loomed over him
- The fab they had in Europe was a mess and they needed another vendor TSMC comes in - Jensen and Chung (ceo of tsmc) became super close.
- The production line had some issues so they turned the office into a testing facility hiring a bunch of immigrants and low skill workers (blue coats) to do testing - there was a class divide beteeen the engineers and blue coats - Jensen quelled this by a staff wide email saying we need these people they are saving us given the production issue
- Nvidia ipo put on hold in 1998 given the challenges with Asia market falling out and this led to a cash crunch. Jensen asked bridge financing from its largest competitors with convertible feature for their future IPO
- Market dynamic of 2 year leadership in graphic market why? PC refresh, 18 month design cycle for new chips
- The conclusion was we need to do 6 month cycles reorganizing the engineering teams - the software was also important because it let them emulate the hardware. Priem’s innovation was critical here
- Backward compatibility for their driver
- 3d fx sued nvidia but they got screwed by not buying them because their chips would lag nvidia by a year
- 3d fx went bankrupt given they bet it all in 2001 the employees that joined nvidia found out that it was hard work and culture that created a competitive advantage
- Jensen Rough justice philosophy business relationship is rough not flat you go up and down and justice in that it should 50/50 over time
- IPO raised 42m which allowed them to take a brief breathe
- Xbox - Microsoft was partnering with gigapixel but nvidia would not give up pushing them to get into the market with Microsoft - nvidia is easier to develop said developers. $200m to develop the new Xbox nvidia’s chip from Microsoft.
- Preem started having a falling out around this time because he was thinking about himself and his software architecture versus seeing it as a collective he still worked like it was a small company.
- $387m raise in convertible and equity
- Innovator dilemma - technology has a profound cycle because innovation always brings low cost players into the market that may be in markets to small to notice by the large players
- Intel was being smart with their manufacturing by selling the defective chip that have slower clock speed at a lower price range increasing their yield on the manufacturing progress
- Nvidia saw that they could use the cards that were malfunction to capture the lower market - create 4 or 5 products and increase asp by using multiple lines - this approach is called using the whole cow - Jensen knew he had a permanent target on his back
- Marketing positioning matters geforce 256 was their follow up to the reava 128 they need to find a way to come up with a way to sell this bigger chip - graphic cards felt like a peripheral so how do you sell it to the market use GPU language to command a higher price - engineers pushed back but the marketer pushed forward it was a resounding success even though the marketing was hyperbole this highlights the importance of being bold and they were messing with their competitors by hanging an advertising on the highway to their competitors company 3d fx.
- Relentless vision, tireless execution and paranoia led the company to new heights reaching 1b in sales in 2001
- Selling to apple - they realized the sell to apple needed a sentimental demo so using Luxo Jr as a showcase for geforce 3 launch and showcasing the real-time rendering blew Steve jobs mind at the end of the meeting jobs said they should do something about laptops because ATI was killing them to which diskin said I think you are wrong and explained that nvidia could do better performance at laptops - this led to 85% of market share of apple
- Xbox revenue of $1.8b and secured contract of apple laptop - this led to impressive financial growth and too many spinning plates for management. While this was happening ATI acquired RX a small graphic company that came out of SGI and got the deal with Nintendo on GC.
- Nv30 was a failure because of the organization challenges and all the spinning plates - ATI took full advantage - nvidia stock fell 80% by then after this failure Jensen vowed not to repeat the same mistake it is acknowledged that if Jensen was in the position of ATI he would of bankrupted nvidia by undercutting their prices but luckily their competitor didn't push which led to nvidia restructuring their teams to make sure the nv30 never happened again
- The rise of the GPUs was started by UNC chapel hill who was using gpus to study physics and weathers. This was the second order use to make progress in understanding protein folding - GPGPU.org - gpus are better at multiple operation than CPUs
- Nv50 (g80 2006) was being developed around this because Jensen saw how software could bring wider application to their GPU. CUDA was everything it is a representation of the hardware through software. Face chicken and egg problem because you need developers to build on it. They made CUDA available to everyone and saturating the market. This brought down their Gross margins excaberated by the great financial crisis of 08 but Jensen saw the vision of CUDA and remained steadfast in his approach of capturing the opportunity.
- G80 was a sale failure but Jensen sold the vision of what it could be in the future medical field etc. Analyst kept asking about short term financials as they usually do not seeing the bigger picture.
- It was all about reaching a new market biosciences which could be an astronomical opportunity
- Ps3 open folding project - led to a proof of concept to show what could be done for the medical field and the beuracoracy of limited super computer time. Students and scientist now could do full testing in very limited GPUs for making CUDA more accessible.
- Always understand your customer more than they know themselves
- Cuda is the moat creating a network effect for the software - 5m developers now
- Jensen would chew everyone out because feedback is learning - PUA technique a guard against mediocrity praise does nothing
- Everyday Jensen tells himself he sucks - everything comes down to themselves - he thinks flat structure would of been better attracting the best talent. Pyramid does not work for attracting excellence. 60 direct reports with minimum face to face. The boss is the vision which is the strategic vision. PIC pilot in command to give accountability.
- Top 5 action items from each division to understand the softer signals
- No ppt focus on ideas and whiteboard to display logic
- Cuda becomes a bigger moat when Jensen Huang hired Bill Dally who was a former professor at MIT and Stanford and this led to bill being able to set the technical roadmap for what ai models needed to flourish in terms of compute and memory and design the hardware and software stck to support it
- Alexnet in 2012 the image generation competition that was won by two gpu was the inflection point massive training data from youtube, plus gpu design and cuda software.
- Enter starboard the activist investor in 2013 they saw nvidia as undervalued with cash of 3billion and a TEV of 8billion so they built up a position of 70m dollars people in the company worried about the activist pressure. Led to stock buybacks which grew the shares 20%.
- Mellanox provided high speed networking products starboard invested and criticized them told them they need to sell. Nvidia joined the bid intel, scionix. Ai required networking this was pivotal. Computing would come off the local. Infintiband has the best networking it was the great deal. $7b deal now doing $12b of revenue
- The company was shifting from a pure focus on operational excellence to a focus on long term competitive advantages by focusing on ray tracing and DLSS locking devs further into their ecosystem and building on their strengths through CUDA and the AI stack to outperform their competitors in AMD and intel
- Digital biology as the future of nvidia generating digital medicine simulation
February 27, 2026
Before this book, I knew only three things about NVIDIA:
1. Its stock had skyrocketed,
2. It makes microchips, and
3. Its founder & CEO, Jensen Huang, wears a leather jacket.
So… I picked up this book to expand my minimal knowledge and better understand NVIDIA’s history and the team behind it, especially given its undeniable influence on gaming, AI, and the wider computing industry.
Going back to the book itself, the first part felt a bit too dry and too technical for me, as it focused heavily on the differences between microchips. From the very beginning, I was more interested in the company’s culture, structure, and the mental models behind its problem-solving rather than detailed product descriptions. Thankfully, the second half was much more valuable to me. My favorite chapter was Chapter 9, “Tortured into Greatness,” because it finally explored how Jensen Huang thinks and the philosophy behind his management style.
In short, I really appreciated his rationale for maintaining a flat organizational structure rather than a traditional hierarchy. I totally get the core idea that a company’s vision and each employee’s direct contribution matter more than titles or layers of management. Additionally, his persistent focus on excellence and continuous innovation is also inspiring. Altogether, it’s pretty impressive how quickly he identifies emerging tech trends.
Here are a few quick notes I highlighted for future inspiration:
1. Execution over titles; problem-solving over bureaucracy. Fewer layers, faster decisions, clearer accountability.
2. Grow through discomfort. Direct feedback = resilience.
3. Clear, data-backed communication is essential to scale.
4. Leaders must think technically and strategically.
5. Hire top talent that thrives on intensity.
6. Plan in decades, not quarters (e.g., CUDA).
7. Decide, then execute. No endless consensus-building.
8. Details matter; “good enough” isn’t.
9. As a leader, be hands-on and visible; communication and accessibility make it work.
4/5 🌟🌟🌟🌟
1. Its stock had skyrocketed,
2. It makes microchips, and
3. Its founder & CEO, Jensen Huang, wears a leather jacket.
So… I picked up this book to expand my minimal knowledge and better understand NVIDIA’s history and the team behind it, especially given its undeniable influence on gaming, AI, and the wider computing industry.
Going back to the book itself, the first part felt a bit too dry and too technical for me, as it focused heavily on the differences between microchips. From the very beginning, I was more interested in the company’s culture, structure, and the mental models behind its problem-solving rather than detailed product descriptions. Thankfully, the second half was much more valuable to me. My favorite chapter was Chapter 9, “Tortured into Greatness,” because it finally explored how Jensen Huang thinks and the philosophy behind his management style.
In short, I really appreciated his rationale for maintaining a flat organizational structure rather than a traditional hierarchy. I totally get the core idea that a company’s vision and each employee’s direct contribution matter more than titles or layers of management. Additionally, his persistent focus on excellence and continuous innovation is also inspiring. Altogether, it’s pretty impressive how quickly he identifies emerging tech trends.
Here are a few quick notes I highlighted for future inspiration:
1. Execution over titles; problem-solving over bureaucracy. Fewer layers, faster decisions, clearer accountability.
2. Grow through discomfort. Direct feedback = resilience.
3. Clear, data-backed communication is essential to scale.
4. Leaders must think technically and strategically.
5. Hire top talent that thrives on intensity.
6. Plan in decades, not quarters (e.g., CUDA).
7. Decide, then execute. No endless consensus-building.
8. Details matter; “good enough” isn’t.
9. As a leader, be hands-on and visible; communication and accessibility make it work.
4/5 🌟🌟🌟🌟
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