The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip

"So this is a super timely book because Nvidia, the company at the center of it, is the world’s most valuable company. Stephen Witt is a former longlisted author for the prize—he wrote a book about music sharing, How Music Got Free, shortlisted in 2015. In The Thinking Machine , he has done a brilliant job of delving into the origins of Nvidia. And just as the House of Huawei book is about the founder, Mr. Ren, this book is very much built around Jensen Huang, the extraordinary, charismatic, hard-driving founder and leader of Nvidia. Huang is in the news almost daily because Nvidia is supplying a lot of the chips that are going into AI. The book paints a picture of a company that, through sheer drive—and also a lot of luck—has managed to put itself in a position to catch this vast wave of AI development. Only a few years ago, the idea of neural networks and generative AI was considered to be a bit hopeless—both in academic and engineering circles. And the origin of Nvidia’s microchips was in gaming, another area that was somewhat neglected. The chips were put together into these vast arrays. By linking together chips that had originally been designed for video games, they could do much more. So Huang’s vision and his drive and his eccentricities—he was a champion table tennis player, for example, at one point—come across very strongly in this book. It’s a really great read. I don’t have any judging influence, but it’s one of my favorites this year. They are absolutely crucial and he’s got a lock hold on the market at the moment. He’s not the only person who’s supplying chips, and everyone is racing to catch up. But Nvidia is in a pretty critical position, and that’s why it has become, latterly, part of US-China tensions. Should Nvidia be allowed to send its most advanced chips to its Chinese customers? And vice versa, are enough rare earths going to be made available by China for supplying these chip factories? These are the things on which future global economic prosperity and peace depend and this book is right at the heart of that. The winner of the 2025 Business Book of the Year Award will be announced on December 3rd ."