Nvidia’s technological prowess has elevated the chip giant to the commanding heights of the red-hot artificial intelligence space.
But a former employee provided key insight into the management philosophy of CEO Jensen Huang, who also played a key role in the company’s stratospheric rise.
René Haas, CEO of British chip designer Arm, worked at Nvidia in the early 2010s and told the Financial Times that Huang organized the company around projects rather than traditional hierarchies, allowing him to access any level of management and get answers directly.
“It’s a very unique culture,” Haas told the FT. “The advantage is transparency and speed. And I think that’s one of the things that Nvidia is really, really good at. They move very, very quickly, they are very, very determined.
That speed was on full display earlier this month, when Huang surprised Wall Street by presenting a rapid pace of new AI platforms.
Last week, he said Nvidia plans to upgrade its AI accelerators every year, announcing the Blackwell Ultra chip for 2025 and a next-generation platform in development called Rubin for 2026.
The Computex trade show in Taiwan last week fueled lingering optimism about AI and the chip sector, briefly helping increase Nvidia’s market capitalization to $3 trillion for the first time. This capped off an epic gathering that saw the company action rising more than 3,100% in the last five years and more than 200% in the last year alone.
In doing so, Huang’s personal wealth also increased. On Friday, he overtook Michael Dell to become the 13th richest person in the world with a net worth of $106.1 billionaccording to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
For his part, Huang, who is one of the 22 CEOs Who Founded Their Fortune 500 Companies– recognized that he was a demanding perfectionist and not easy to work for.
“It should be like this. If you want to do extraordinary things, it shouldn’t be easy,” he said. 60 minutes in April.
