Jang Sang-yong highlights Jensen Huang's rise and leadership philosophy in new book

What kind of person is Jensen Huang, who leads the world's largest AI semiconductor corporation NVIDIA?

A new book titled "Jensen Huang, the Rules of the Game" captures the success story of Jensen Huang, who started as an Asian immigrant and founded NVIDIA, reaching the peak as its CEO.

Author Jang Sang-yong, a content expert with 25 years of experience, sheds light on Jensen Huang from a different angle than economic experts. In particular, the author selects 44 quotes from Jensen Huang to trace the essence of leadership.

What is the success theory of a leader in a leading AI corporation? Jensen Huang noted, "Success is about continuously improving and expanding your domain," advocating the two principles of "growth" and "expansion."

The keyword "growth" can be seen in NVIDIA's product development process. NVIDIA started as a gaming graphics card company. The makeshift planning sessions held at the restaurant "Dennys," where Jensen Huang worked part-time, as well as the failure of the first product NV1, where 249,000 out of 250,000 units were returned, illustrate the challenging early days of the startup.

However, Jensen Huang ultimately created the "GeForce 256 (NV3)," which sold like hotcakes worldwide. His game theory of "If you lose, lose, and lose again, you will eventually win" was realized in reality.

NVIDIA's "expansion" was a strategic pivot from a successful gaming graphics card company to an AI corporation. Jensen Huang captured the potential for expansion in the AI market when Professor Geoffrey Hinton's team, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2024, presented the artificial neural network "AlexNet" trained using NVIDIA's Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) in 2012. He later expanded the use of the existing product, GPU, from gaming to AI. This was a decisive moment that positioned NVIDIA as a super-gap corporation.

The book also contains insights into Jensen Huang's childhood and the management philosophy he emphasizes. Recalling a dishwashing job he started at fifteen, Jensen Huang remarked that he learned "humility and the value of hard work." He also stresses intellectual honesty, stating, "Without intellectual honesty, you cannot create a culture that embraces failure, and corporations cannot grow."

While striving for success, Jensen Huang also emphasizes the importance of relationships and humanity. He is known as a CEO who rarely conducts layoffs, under the philosophy that "because I believed in my hopes and dreams, I share with the countless people who joined NVIDIA."