NVIDIA: Jensen Huang. From near collapse to becoming the world’s biggest company

Jensen Huang, co-founder and CEO of NVIDIA, recounts how a company once on the brink of collapse transformed into the world’s most valuable company by betting on a vision far ahead of its time. What began as a graphics chip maker for gamers became the backbone of the AI revolution through a decade-long, high-stakes gamble on CUDA—a platform that turned GPUs into general-purpose supercomputers. Despite years of flat stock prices, investor skepticism, and near-bankruptcy, Huang persisted, driven by a belief that technology’s true power emerges not in perfection, but in being 'good enough' to disrupt entire industries. When AI finally arrived in the early 2010s, NVIDIA’s chips were already everywhere—hidden in gaming PCs, quietly powering research. The company’s pivot to AI wasn’t a surprise to Huang; it was the culmination of a 15-year strategic bet. Today, he rejects fears of AI extinction, arguing that alarmism harms progress and that AI will create more jobs than it replaces—like in radiology, where AI boosted demand, not replaced doctors. Huang’s leadership style is rooted in relentless focus, emotional detachment from past pain, and a deep conviction that the future is built by those who keep going when no one else believes.