The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World's Most Coveted Microchip
Apr 2025 · Sold by Penguin
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About this ebook
Longlisted for the FT and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award
“A lively biography. . . . The story of how Nvidia became the hottest investment on Wall Street and a household name is fascinating.” —Katie Notopoulos, The New York Times Book Review
“Framed as a biography of Jensen Huang, the only CEO Nvidia has ever had, the book is also something more interesting and revealing: a window onto the intellectual, cultural, and economic ecosystem that has led to the emergence of superpowerful AI.”
—James Surowiecki, The Atlantic
“Stephen Witt’s deep reporting shines through every page of The Thinking Machine. The result is a page-turning biography of perhaps the most consequential CEO and company in the world.” —David Epstein, New York Times bestselling author of Range
Nvidia is as valuable as Apple and Microsoft. It has shaped the world as we know it. But its story is little known. This is the definitive story of the greatest technology company of our times.
In June of 2024, thirty-one years after its founding in a Denny’s restaurant, Nvidia became the most valuable corporation on Earth. The Thinking Machine is the astonishing story of how a designer of video game equipment conquered the market for AI hardware, and in the process re-invented the computer.
Essential to Nvidia’s meteoric success is its visionary CEO Jensen Huang, who more than a decade ago, on the basis of a few promising scientific results, bet his entire company on AI. Through unprecedented access to Huang, his friends, his investors, and his employees, Witt documents for the first time the company’s epic rise and its single-minded and ferocious leader, now one of Silicon Valley’s most influential figures.
The Thinking Machine is the story of how Nvidia evolved to supplying hundred-million-dollar supercomputers. It is the story of a determined entrepreneur who defied Wall Street to push his radical vision for computing, becoming one of the wealthiest men alive. It is the story of a revolution in computer architecture, and the small group of renegade engineers who made it happen. And it’s the story of our awesome and terrifying AI future, which Huang has billed as the ‘next industrial revolution,’ as a new kind of microchip unlocks hyper-realistic avatars, autonomous robots, self-driving cars, and new movies, art, and books, generated on command.
This is the story of the company that is inventing the future.
“A lively biography. . . . The story of how Nvidia became the hottest investment on Wall Street and a household name is fascinating.” —Katie Notopoulos, The New York Times Book Review
“Framed as a biography of Jensen Huang, the only CEO Nvidia has ever had, the book is also something more interesting and revealing: a window onto the intellectual, cultural, and economic ecosystem that has led to the emergence of superpowerful AI.”
—James Surowiecki, The Atlantic
“Stephen Witt’s deep reporting shines through every page of The Thinking Machine. The result is a page-turning biography of perhaps the most consequential CEO and company in the world.” —David Epstein, New York Times bestselling author of Range
Nvidia is as valuable as Apple and Microsoft. It has shaped the world as we know it. But its story is little known. This is the definitive story of the greatest technology company of our times.
In June of 2024, thirty-one years after its founding in a Denny’s restaurant, Nvidia became the most valuable corporation on Earth. The Thinking Machine is the astonishing story of how a designer of video game equipment conquered the market for AI hardware, and in the process re-invented the computer.
Essential to Nvidia’s meteoric success is its visionary CEO Jensen Huang, who more than a decade ago, on the basis of a few promising scientific results, bet his entire company on AI. Through unprecedented access to Huang, his friends, his investors, and his employees, Witt documents for the first time the company’s epic rise and its single-minded and ferocious leader, now one of Silicon Valley’s most influential figures.
The Thinking Machine is the story of how Nvidia evolved to supplying hundred-million-dollar supercomputers. It is the story of a determined entrepreneur who defied Wall Street to push his radical vision for computing, becoming one of the wealthiest men alive. It is the story of a revolution in computer architecture, and the small group of renegade engineers who made it happen. And it’s the story of our awesome and terrifying AI future, which Huang has billed as the ‘next industrial revolution,’ as a new kind of microchip unlocks hyper-realistic avatars, autonomous robots, self-driving cars, and new movies, art, and books, generated on command.
This is the story of the company that is inventing the future.
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August 18, 2025
Stephen Witt did a phenomenal job with this book. This review may be AI-assisted, but the sentiment is real. The last chapter, The Thinking Machine, showed Jensen’s reaction in a way I immediately recognized from personal experience: a very Chinese style of sharp, emotional pushback. It wasn’t cruelty but cultural—when annoyed or pressed, the response can be blunt, even explosive, but it comes from a place of intensity, not hatred. His PR team should have buffered the moment, yet what you captured was authentic. He likely wanted to be written with the same reverence Isaacson gave Jobs. Overall, an excellent, insightful read—and one Jensen himself may still value.
About the author
Stephen Witt is the author of How Music Got Free, which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, and the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Financial Times, New York, The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, and GQ. He lives in Los Angeles, California.
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