There is something deeply unsettling about the men who build the future. Behind the vision, the brilliance, and the relentless pursuit of progress, there may lie a darker impulse: an inability to confront the consequences of one’s own creation. Jensen Huang, the architect of Nvidia’s extraordinary rise, offers a compelling portrait of ambition at its most uncompromising — and of the anger that emerges when the myth of progress is challenged.
Huang’s employees sometimes complain of his mercurial personality. “It’s really about what’s going on in my brain versus what’s coming out of my mouth,” Huang told me. “When the mismatch is great, then it comes out as anger.” Even when he’s calm, Huang’s intensity can be overwhelming. “Interacting with him is kind of like sticking your finger in the electric socket,” one employee said.
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Huang’s business position can be compared to that of Samuel Brannan, the celebrated vender of prospecting supplies in San Francisco in the late eighteen-forties. “There’s a war going on out there in A.I., and Nvidia is the only arms dealer,” one Wall Street analyst said.
