By Akriti Rana,Nimish Dubey
Publication Date: 2025-12-08 11:05:00
It started out as a brand whose first processor was an unmitigated disaster and was literally days away from collapse (with most of the staff laid off), but it was saved by a special processor for Sega. It then made graphics cards a thing among gamers, but another processor disaster almost brought it to its knees again. It recovered yet again to become the processor brand that is seen by many to be driving the AI revolution and is also one of the most valuable companies in the world. The story of NVIDIA is right out of a classic Hollywood Western, with the pendulum swinging back and forth between the good, the bad and the ugly.
The person in the eye of this tech processor storm has been the high-profile, highly idiosyncratic Jensen Huang, the CEO and President of NVIDIA. Known for his dedication to work and willingness to take risks — he uses the line “our company is thirty days from going out of business” to instil a sense of urgency at work — Huang is rapidly acquiring the sort of aura that the likes of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Elon Musk have: of being a genius, tech billionaire baron who could control our lives.
The story of NVIDIA told sharply and succinctly
Stephen Witt’s The Thinking Machine brings readers up close to Jensen Huang and the rise of NVIDIA. (Photo: Wikimedia)
Stephen Witt’s The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, NVIDIA and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip attempts to bring readers close to both Huang and NVIDIA, the company he co-founded…
