He said the basic research unit was not affordable and needed to be downsized. He was quite concerned about IBM’s software business, mainframe business, and midrange products. As I look back at my notes, it is clear he understood most, if not all, of the business issues we tackled over the ensuing years. What’s striking from my notes is the absence of any mention of culture, teamwork, customers, or leadership—the elements that turned

out to be the toughest challenges at IBM…

I went home with a deepening sense of fear. Could I pull this off? Who was going to help me?

Huang eschewed drama and led by example, driving himself hard, refraining from gossip, and carefully apportioning credit for good work. If a product was going to be late or if LSI couldn’t deliver on some promised function, Huang would immediately provide a detailed description of what had gone wrong, who was responsible, and what he was doing to fix it.

“When he said he was going to do something, there was a reasonable likelihood that he would actually do it, y’know?” Malachowsky said. Malachowsky struggled to think of other Silicon Valley product managers who fit that description.

If Huang had a flaw, it was that he embraced candor in the extreme, sometimes crossing into the territory of insult. The bluntness was part of his charm, of course, but it could leave people’s feelings hurt. He didn’t have much patience for people who disagreed with him, and he also seemed genuinely surprised that there were people working in his industry who didn’t want to spend fourteen hours a day fiddling with the circuit simulator. Of course, for quarrelsome workaholics like Priem and Malachowsky, these traits were only further evidence of Jensen’s managerial fitness.

The product was known as a “graphics accelerator,” and at least thirty-five competitors were trying to build one. Huang worried there was no space for a thirty-sixth. The leading expert in computer graphics was Jon Peddie, who had written several textbooks on the topic. Huang had reached out to Peddie to get a sense of the market, and the two soon became friends, with Huang calling incessantly, asking questions late into the night. Peddie advised Huang that the space was too crowded and that many of the best engineers were already working for other start-ups. “I told him not to do it,” Peddie said. “That was the best advice he never took.

But Huang’s knowledge of business books was encyclopedic. Dwight Diercks recalled Huang arguing with another executive about how much Nvidia’s products should cost. “The guy had an MBA, but he’d never read a book about pricing,” Diercks said. “Jensen had read probably ten or fifteen.” As the argument progressed, Huang halted the discussion and asked the MBA to name his three favorite books on pricing. The guy fumbled around for a bit, unable to name a single title. Huang listed out his three favorites, then told the executive he’d resume the discussion once he’d finished them.

Of more than a hundred former and current Nvidia employees I spoke with for this book, almost all had a tender story about Huang to relate. One employee—the same one whom Huang had humiliated in front of dozens of people, asking for a full refund of his salary—told me that when he was later diagnosed with a serious medical issue, Huang offered to pay in full, out of pocket, for his treatment. When Ben Garlick decided to leave Nvidia for a start-up, he was startled to receive an impassioned, personal plea from Huang to stay.