The secret to NVIDIA's success: Inside the mind of Jensen Huang | Lex Fridman Podcast Clips

because Nvidia has continued to make bold bets that predict the future and in part especially now define the future. So I'm almost looking for wisdom about how you're able to make those decisions to make leaps like that as a company. Well, f first of all, um I'm informed by by a lot of curiosity. Uh at some point there's a reasoning system that convinces me uh so clearly this outcome will happen that this will happen. And so I believe it in my mind. And when mind, you know, you know how it is. You manifest a future and that future is so convincing. There's no way it won't happen. There's a lot of suffering in between. But you've got to believe what you believe. — So you you envision the future. — Yeah. — And you essentially from a sort of engineering perspective manifest it. — Yeah. And you reason about how to get there. You reason about why it must exist. Um and um and you know I reason we all reason it here the management team will reason about it all the people that I we spend a lot of time reasoning about it. The thing that the next part of it is probably a skill thing which is you know oftentimes in leadership uh the leadership stays quiet or they learn about something and then they do some manifesto and it's a brand new year and somehow at the end of the year next year we're going to have a brand new plan, big huge layoff this way, big huge organization change this way, new mission statement, brand new logos, um you know that kind of stuff. Um, we've just never I never do things that way. When I learn about something and it's starting to influence how I think, I'll make it very clear to everybody near me that, you know, this is interesting. Um, this is going to make a difference. Uh, impact that. And I reason about things step by step. oftentimes I've already made up my mind but I'll take every possible opportunity external information new insights new discoveries uh new engineering you know revelations uh new milestones developed I'll take those opportunities and I'll use it to shape everybody else's belief system and I'm doing that literally every single day I'm doing that with my board management team I'm doing that with my employees I'm trying to shape their belief system such that when I come the day I say, "Hey, let's buy Melanox. " It's completely obvious to everybody that we absolutely should. On the day that I that I said, "Hey guys, let's go all in on deep learning. " And let me tell you why. I've already been laying down the bricks to different organizations inside the company. every organization and every everybody many of the people might have heard everything most of the company heard hears of course pieces of it and on the day that I announce it um everybody's kind of bought into many pieces of it and in a lot of ways I like to announce these things and I imagine um that the employees are kind of saying you know Jensen what took you so long and in fact, I've been shaping their belief system for some time. And therefore, leadership sometimes it looks like you're leading from behind. — But you've been shaping their, you know, to the point where on the day that I declared it, 100% buy in. But that's what you want. You want to bring everybody along. You know, otherwise we announce something about deep learning and everybody goes, "What are you talking about? " you know, you announce something about let's go all in on this thing and your management team, your board, your employees, your customers, they're kind of like where's this coming from? You know, this is insane. And so uh GTC in fact if you go back in time you look at the keynotes I'm also shaping the belief system of my partners and the industry and I'm using that to shape you know the belief system of my own employees and and so by the time that I announce something like for example we just now we just announced Grock we've been late I've been talking about the stepping stones for two and a half years you guys just go back and go, "Oh my gosh, they've been talking about it for 2 and 1/2 years. " And so I've been laying the foundation step by step. So when the time comes, you announce it, everybody's, you know, what took you so long? — But it's not just inside the company. You're shaping the landscape, the

broader global landscape of innovation. Like putting those ideas out there, you really are manifesting reality. We don't build computers. We actually don't build clouds. We don't, as it turns out, we're a computing platform company. And so nobody can buy anything from us. That's the weird thing. You know, we ver we vertically design vertically integrate to design and optimize, but then we open up the entire platform at every single layer to be integrated into other companies products and services and clouds and supercomputers and OEM computers and so the amazing thing is I can't do what I do without having convinced them first. And so most of GTC is about manifesting a future that by the time that we my product is ready, they're going, "What took you so long?