Nvidia is the world’s leading graphics processing unit (GPU) maker. It significantly influences the semiconductor market and is a leading driver of the ongoing AI boom. Over the years, the stock has returned massive gains for investors, which can be directly linked to the innovation and experience of its hard-working employees.
The company owes its success to the tens of thousands of people who work at Nvidia, and each has a vital role in the company’s success. However, some stand out in their contribution to the company with their leadership qualities, and innovations that helped shape today’s computing industry. Executives like CEO Jensen Huang, Ian Buck of Accelerated Computing, Bryan Catanzaro of applied deep learning research, and Alexis Black Bjorlin overseeing the AI DGX Cloud platform are some of the top leaders playing an instrumental role in Nvidia’s transformation to an AI giant.
Before expanding to GPUs with high processing power, Nvidia manufactured graphics chips for the gaming industry. With the advent of AI, more companies are seeking Nvidia’s H100 and A100 GPUs to explore GenAI solutions and train large language models. As Nvidia rapidly builds AI factories and rolls out its Blackwell chips, the company has become a vital component of data centre operations for giants like Amazon and Microsoft and a boon for suppliers like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
Nvidia’s senior management welcomes diverse work philosophies that focus on character-building, resiliency, and developing a tolerance for failure to overcome fears associated with experimenting with new technologies in search of profound results.
So who are the four leaders who helped shape the Nvidia brand? Let’s get to know them:
Jensen Huang, CEO And Co-founder
Jensen Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 with Curtis Priem and Chris Malachowsky. Huang graduated from Oregon State University and Stanford University with a specialisation in electrical engineering and is deemed the visionary behind Nvidia’s success.
With a net worth of over $107 billion, Huang propelled Nvidia to a multi-trillion dollar market capitalisation with the philosophy that if there’s no pain, there’s no gain. “Greatness is not intelligence. Greatness comes from character. And character isn’t formed out of smart people, it’s formed out of people who suffered,” Huang said at a Stanford University event.
He believes resilience improves one’s chances of success and that people with high expectations have low resilience. Simultaneously, building a “tolerance for failure” also helps one overcome the fear of failure and offers the courage to experiment and innovate.
Ian Buck, Vice President Of Accelerated Computing
Ian Buck is the general manager and VP of accelerated computing at Nvidia. He invented CUDA, or “compute unified device architecture,” a parallel computing platform introduced in 2006. CUDA for Nvidia GPUs offered massive processing power to execute extensive math calculations, leaving rivals like Advanced Micro Devices scrambling to catch up.
The software was developed with the help of Buck’s research at Stanford University. “We talked to a lot of people in a lot of different industries and found that no one wanted to learn a new language,” he told Next Platform.
Buck is credited with CUDA’s adaptability, which enables accelerated AI training and is primarily responsible for Nvidia’s competitive advantage over other chipmakers.
Bryan Catanzaro, Vice President Of Applied Deep Learning Research
Fast Company credited Bryan Catanzaro with Nvidia’s “AI Big Bang” for consistently elevating its focus on AI and deep learning from its early days as a graphic card company. “I didn’t actually convince Jensen, instead I just explained deep learning to him. He instantly formed his own conviction and pivoted Nvidia to be an AI company,” Catanzaro wrote in a LinkedIn post.
A decade before the 2024 AI boom, Nvidia, a graphics company mostly known to gamers and PC enthusiasts, decided to bet on AI. “I didn’t think that it was actually even possible to focus Nvidia on something like this,” Catanzaro told Fast Company, “because, at the time, it was a different company.”
Currently, he oversees the AI research lab. Catanzaro is also involved in projects like building a Megatron transformer to train natural language processing models and improve graphic quality using Deep Learning Super Sampling technologies. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and joined Nvidia as an intern. Over time, Catanzaro became a research scientist before leaving the company for Baidu to work on AI speech recognition. He rejoined Nvidia in 2016.
Alexis Black Bjorlin, Vice President And General Manager For DGX Cloud
Alexis Black Bjorlin is a cloud industry veteran with previous experience working for companies like Broadcom and Intel. In late 2023, she left Meta as the vice president of infrastructure to join Nvidia as the VP and general manager for DGX Cloud. At Meta, Bjorlin oversaw the development of in-house AI chips.
The AI-powered DGX Cloud platform allows developers to rent GPU servers directly and offers end-to-end application development features. The platform competes against Amazon Web Services and Microsoft and is already helping clients in drugs discovery, transforming in-car experiences, and bringing automation to enterprises.
Bjorlin graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Materials Science and Engineering before earning a Ph.D. in the same field from the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Competitors Catching Up To Nvidia Fast
According to a note from Citigroup this week, AI player Broadcom, which helps tech firms develop AI chips, is closing in on Nvidia as the next top AI stock. Citi backed its view, citing recent conversations with New York investors indicating Broadcom is looking increasingly compelling.
“From our conversations, it seems AVGO [Broadcom] is catching up to NVDA [Nvidia] as the top holding as AVGO has more AI customers joining (OpenAI and Bytedance) and accretion from VMware. We also believe there is some investor fatigue with NVDA,” Citi said.
Broadcom also recently acquired VMware and continues to witness a surge in demand for its networking chips. The company also partnered with Google’s TPU v7 AI chip programme and Meta Platforms’ third-gen AI chip, which are expected to bring in billions of dollars in revenue over the coming years. While Broadcom’s shares are up 50% year-to-date, it has a long way to go before catching up with Nvidia and matching the experience and innovation driven by the company’s top leaders.
