Stephen Witt

Witt has a knack for explaining the science in ways that everyone can understand… A thrilling origin story... This is the rarest of books on tech – one that may just leave you feeling good about an entrepreneur founder and optimistic about the future

Gripping and brilliantly told, this is the amazing story of the improbable origins of one of the most important technologies of our times

Mustafa Suleyman, author of The Coming Wave and CEO of Microsoft AI

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

The Thinking Machine brilliantly captures the riveting, unlikely story of Jensen Huang’s Nvidia—a company driving the exponential growth of artificial intelligence and humanity's inevitable merger with technology. Stephen Witt’s exceptional reporting offers a rare glimpse into the pioneers driving humanity’s leap toward an infinite future

Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity is Nearer

A great story and Witt tells it well. He paints a rounded picture of a remarkable entrepreneur – part visionary, part maniacal workaholic, part inspiring corporate leader

Closely reported and brilliantly written ... Highly entertaining

Thought-provoking, [and] occasionally alarming… Jensen Huang… deserves this wide-ranging account of his life and the meteoric rise of his company

The Thinking Machine…is the second such corporate biography [on Nvidia]… Witt approaches his subject with a more critical eye and more verve

The richer and more accessible account of Nvidia’s 30-year journey from Silicon Valley…to AI behemoth

[A] deeply researched, illuminating and often rather funny book… for those wanting an engaging and revealing insight into what Nvidia’s journey to becoming one of most vital firms of the modern tech industry has been like, The Thinking Machine is unrivalled

A delicious account of how a scrawny Taiwanese immigrant, with an intense commitment to reason, loyalty to people, and a Stakhanovite work ethic, built the engine of the AI revolution

Michael Moritz, former Chairman, Sequoia Capital

The AI revolution that defines this decade, and probably this century, rests on the shoulders of a shockingly small number of geniuses; and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang is prominent among them. Witt’s superb portrait is both entertaining and disquieting, capturing an indispensable, elusive, and isolated man: the hardware wizard behind the machines that are careering toward something very much like sentience

Sebastian Mallaby, New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Law

Before reading The Thinking Machine, I didn't understand just how much the rise of Jensen Huang and Nvidia explains the sudden explosion of artificial intelligence. Stephen Witt’s sweeping narrative offers a roadmap to the various forces rapidly changing our lives, tucked into the wild insider story of how one of our strangest and most singular entrepreneurs—in an era chock full of them—not only built a remarkable company but also helped to usher in our brave new world

Reeves Wiedeman, author of Billion Dollar Loser

Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip

The riveting account of Nvidia, the tech company that has exploded in value for its artificial intelligence computing hardware, and Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s charismatic, uncompromising CEO. 
 
In June of 2024, spurred by the frenzy of investment following the launch of ChatGPT, and thirty-one years after its founding in a Denny’s restaurant, Nvidia became the most-valuable corporation on Earth. In The Thinking Machine, acclaimed journalist Stephen Witt recounts the unlikely story of how a manufacturer of video game components shocked Silicon Valley by conquering 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 iconoclastic CEO, who emerges as a compelling, single-minded, and ferocious leader, and now one of Silicon Valley’s most influential figures. 
 
The Thinking Machine is the story of how Nvidia evolved from providing components for circuit boards 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, in the process 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.

Stephen Witt

Praise for The Thinking Machine

Witt has a knack for explaining the science in ways that everyone can understand… A thrilling origin story... This is the rarest of books on tech – one that may just leave you feeling good about an entrepreneur foun ...

Gripping and brilliantly told, this is the amazing story of the improbable origins of one of the most important technologies of our times

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

Witt has a knack for explaining the science in ways that everyone can understand… A thrilling origin story... This is the rarest of books on tech – one that may just leave you feeling good about an entrepreneur foun ...

Gripping and brilliantly told, this is the amazing story of the improbable origins of one of the most important technologies of our times

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

Witt has a knack for explaining the science in ways that everyone can understand… A thrilling origin story... This is the rarest of books on tech – one that may just leave you feeling good about an entrepreneur foun ...

Gripping and brilliantly told, this is the amazing story of the improbable origins of one of the most important technologies of our times

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

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter