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

One should not stop at learning technical processes but always be open to how technical change impacts society. “The NVIDIA Way” (Norton, 2025) by Tae Kim explores NVIDIA and how they turned technological success into societal change. Jensen Huang, NVIDIA’s CEO, and the longest active serving technical CEO, plays a key part in that success. The book divides into a chronological approach: before 1993, 1993-2003, 2002-2013, and from 2013 to the present. This should be essential reading for anyone managing a startup, working on product issues, and desiring a better look at the marketplace.The chronological approach is unusual as it focuses on Jensen first and then moves to the technological change. The early NVIDIA processes had setbacks and potential fails, but it is the company's structure and culture moving them forward. I do not know if all the NVIDIA successes are paths for me, but it highlights multiple paths to success. One could skip directly to NVIDIA current successes but would lose how those decisions became the organic culture.Employees often describe NVIDIA as not a 24x7 approach but a 25x8 approach, never ceasing, never stopping, and eliminating opponents by sheer hard work. There is a quote from Jensen, “Don’t worry about the score, it’s how you play the game” that resonates strongly with me. As a martial arts coach, I always tell students to seek technical perfection, and the wins will arrive in time. In boarding school, ping pong, and his undergraduate studies, Jensen’s early years show this as he excels not only at the task but earns the money to support those achievements with multiple janitorial jobs Think about character strength and resilience needed to work as a janitor in the same location one attends school. This constant resilience enabled success as NVIDA launched in later years.The company's first success was the founders departing LSI Logic to focus on graphics cards for PCs and the gaming industry. When NVIDIA first launched, the goal was for the first card NV1, to do everything from graphics to audio to processing. The computer game DOOM proved this was impossible as even excelling at graphics, it fell behind audio standards. Succeeding from the early failures required purchasing testing equipment and speeding up software development so drivers were ready at the same time as the chip. This was drastically different than other chip manufacturing companies and more in tune with a modern DevOps approach. The end result was the RIVA 128 chip.Essential NVIDIA growth depended on the “ship the whole cow” concept. This meant that chips failing high-level testing were sold at a reduced price.. Many vendors gradually reduced selling prices, but NVIDIA always believed in their value, keeping prices high. Despite selling lower quality parts at lower cost, the parts were still market leaders. This applies years later in selling advanced GPUs when linking cheaper graphics cards could perform similar functions. An example of this appears in a meeting with Steve Jobs about laptop NVIDIA chips. Steve believed the chips were overpowered for the laptops but NVIDIA engineers explained simply lowering the clock speed made the chips perform, leading to their inclusion in all systems.NVIDIA’s market growth is best tied to the GPU market. This was when research scientists realized the same technical specifications creating success for graphics could be engineered to address extremely large matrix math, with up to millions of parameters. Matrix math is a key to current machine learning and AI algorithms, even if those were not the immediate answers at the time. The first major use was life sciences, measuring protein folding and biological interaction. One key disagreement with NVIDIA strategy happened whan a scientist, Ross Walker, first using the proprietary CUDA code, wanted to purchase only commercial GEFORCE graphics cards instead of the higher-end GPUS. Despite NVIDIA introducing technical controls, Ross continued his approach even with a later career at GlaxoSmithKline. NVIDIA continued to advocate always purchasing the highest quality and, consequently, expensive models.The success continued into the modern era as NVIDIA supplies top-end solutions, emphasizing engineering first over profit-taking incentives. Jensen emphasized several approaches to focus on technical success. Even during expansion, he introduced a flat organization with all employees, sending a top five concerns to the CEO weekly. One might see this from recent news about DOGE, requesting government employees to take a similar approach. Another emphasis was all employees had to respond to any email within two hours, again hitting the 25x8 structure. A third approach was all employees were accountable for all ideas with Jensen frequently calling out individuals to defend ideas in public meetings. I do not necessarily agree with public shaming, but Jensen followed it up with the concept that no one should fail alone, encouraging others to ask for help frequently.One area where I found fault with Kim’s writing was the book becomes very disjointed in later sections. Maintaining a chronological approach creates challenges as the company expands and more areas grow rapidly. The later section might have benefited more from a functional approach from 2018 to current, highlighting marketing, product, CUDA, GPUs, and other developments separately. The chronological approach fails as these items are difficult to follow in later chapters.Overall, “The NVIDIA Way” should be a must-read for tech professionals. The essential learning points are demonstrating resilience, leading innovation, and maintaining a consistent strategic vision. Along the way, the book demonstrates how companies like Google, Silicon Graphics, and many graphics companies failed by concentrating on profit rather than technology. Jensen shows up as a unique individual, and a key behind NVIDIA’s success. I don’t think the model can be duplicated but there are several good industry lessons. The book reads quickly and I recommend it for CPOs, CTOs, and CEOs looking to grow their knowledge.

Loved it! Just kept getting better and better. This entrepreneurial colossus demonstrates exactly the mindset needed to achieve greatness.

For a non-technical person there is much to learn and much of the technical to understand and appreciat GB GB n. bi be

The story of Nvidia and Jensen Huang is truly a great American success story. For a detailed look into Jensen's unique management style and Nvidia's culture, this book is a must read. Besides all the great Jensen stories in the book, I also enjoyed reading about all the other executives and employees that helped make Nvidia a success. There's great lessons to be learned from reading this book, whether you're in engineering, finance, marketing, or general management. You can tell the author spent a great deal of time speaking to company sources and former employees for all the detailed stories. Worth the time to read!

This is an amazing read. It gives a glimpse into the genius of Nvidea. Read the book, then go buy some stock!

I want to mention Tae Kim for his unique and engaging book, The NVIDIA Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant. I highly recommend this book to all leaders, especially those in strategy and management consulting. It's hard to believe that this is Tae's first book. His storytelling skills are exceptional, and I found myself engrossed in it and finished it in no time.Under the leadership of Jensen Huang, NVIDIA embodies a strong spirit of resilience. The company has faced significant challenges, including financial crises threatening its survival and the innovator's dilemma. Jensen exemplifies determination and unwavering focus, fostering a culture that values deep knowledge and encourages everyone at NVIDIA to strive for the "Speed of Light" in their execution and commitment.Tae has conducted numerous interviews to identify situations, the way decisions are made, and the complex market dynamics. While the book focuses on NVIDIA, the leader, Jensen, can not be separated from the company. Tae has seamlessly tied Jensen's personality traits; his sheer brilliance and astute obsession with being number one are elegantly conveyed through various situations. The situations are presented so elegantly that we feel that we were present when that situation occurred.

I finished reading it in three days, and I found the story of Jensen Huang’s early entrepreneurial days quite fascinating. There are many interesting anecdotes that really convey his influence and style. However, the later sections dive too much into the technical details of chips, and a lot of it focuses on the employees. While reading, I felt like Jensen Huang was distant and there was a lack of depth—just a bunch of employee interviews. The AI section toward the end was better. The timeline was also very chaotic, especially between 2003 and 2013, where there were frequent timeline jumps. I often felt confused and unsure about which stage the events were taking place.

Great story..