
The Thinking Machine
Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World's Most Coveted Microchip
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Narrated by:
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Stephen Witt
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By:
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Stephen Witt
About this listen
“A lively biography. . . . The story of how Nvidia became the hottest investment on Wall Street and a household name is fascinating.”—Katie Notopoulos, The New York Times Book Review
“Framed as a biography of Jensen Huang, the only CEO Nvidia has ever had, the book is also something more interesting and revealing: a window onto the intellectual, cultural, and economic ecosystem that has led to the emergence of superpowerful AI.”—James Surowiecki, The Atlantic
“Stephen Witt’s deep reporting shines through every page of The Thinking Machine. The result is a page-turning biography of perhaps the most consequential CEO and company in the world.”—David Epstein, New York Times bestselling author of Range
Nvidia is as valuable as Apple and Microsoft. It has shaped the world as we know it. But its story is little known. This is the definitive story of the greatest technology company of our times.
In June of 2024, thirty-one years after its founding in a Denny’s restaurant, Nvidia became the most valuable corporation on Earth. The Thinking Machine is the astonishing story of how a designer of video game equipment conquered the market for AI hardware, and in the process re-invented the computer.
Essential to Nvidia’s meteoric success is its visionary CEO Jensen Huang, who more than a decade ago, on the basis of a few promising scientific results, bet his entire company on AI. Through unprecedented access to Huang, his friends, his investors, and his employees, Witt documents for the first time the company’s epic rise and its single-minded and ferocious leader, now one of Silicon Valley’s most influential figures.
The Thinking Machine is the story of how Nvidia evolved to supplying hundred-million-dollar supercomputers. It is the story of a determined entrepreneur who defied Wall Street to push his radical vision for computing, becoming one of the wealthiest men alive. It is the story of a revolution in computer architecture, and the small group of renegade engineers who made it happen. And it’s the story of our awesome and terrifying AI future, which Huang has billed as the ‘next industrial revolution,’ as a new kind of microchip unlocks hyper-realistic avatars, autonomous robots, self-driving cars, and new movies, art, and books, generated on command.
This is the story of the company that is inventing the future.
©2025 Stephen Witt (P)2025 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Framed as a biography of Jensen Huang, the only CEO Nvidia has ever had, the book is also something more interesting and revealing: a window onto the intellectual, cultural, and economic ecosystem that has led to the emergence of superpowerful AI. . . . Among Witt’s key contributions is to show that Nvidia’s success can’t be understood apart from the culture and economy of Silicon Valley (and of tech more generally).”—James Surowiecki, The Atlantic
“Mr. Witt is adept at explaining the hardware and software behind AI. Lay readers mystified by parallel processing and large language models will find The Thinking Machine worth reading.”—Marc Levinson, The Wall Street Journal
“Gripping and brilliantly told, this is the amazing story of the improbable origins of one of the most important technologies of our times.”—Mustafa Suleyman, New York Times bestselling author of The Coming Wave and CEO of Microsoft AI
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How Music Got Free is a riveting story of obsession, music, crime, and money, featuring visionaries and criminals, moguls and tech-savvy teenagers. It's about the greatest pirate in history, the most powerful executive in the music business, a revolutionary invention, and an illegal website four times the size of the iTunes music store.
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Compelling Story about Technology and the Recording Industry
- By Sara Graffunder on 06-20-15
By: Stephen Witt
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First Class Comrades
- The Stasi in the Cold War, 1945-1961
- By: J. Boulter
- Narrated by: Graham Mack
- Length: 36 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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No country in history has been more deeply penetrated by spies than divided Germany after the Second World War. Fighting for the eastern corner were the 'first class comrades' of the Stasi—the East German Ministry for State Security. Rising from the ruins of a defeated country, and guided by its KGB masters, the early Cold War saw the Stasi establish itself as one of the world's most notorious spy and secret police agencies.
By: J. Boulter
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The Insider's Guide to Innovation @ Microsoft
- By: JoAnn Garbin, Dean Carignan, Eric Horvitz - foreword
- Narrated by: JoAnn Garbin
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Are there innovation truisms that hold from one initiative to the next? Are there strategies that appear again and again in the success stories of businesses as varied as gaming and cloud infrastructure? Are there behaviors common to creative leadership in every role, from research to sales? And if these patterns exist, could they be distilled into teachable practices? These are the questions Dean Carignan and JoAnn Garbin, two senior innovation leaders at Microsoft, set out to answer.
By: JoAnn Garbin, and others
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There's Nothing Like This
- The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift
- By: Kevin Evers
- Narrated by: Candace Joice
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Singer-songwriter. Trailblazer. Mastermind. The Beatles of her generation. From her genre-busting rise in country music as a teenager to the economic juggernaut that is the Eras Tour, Taylor Swift has blazed a path that is uniquely hers. But how exactly has she managed to scale her success—multiple times—while dominating an industry that cycles through artists and stars like fashion trends? How has she managed to make and remake herself time and again while remaining true to her artistic vision?
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Super insightful
- By Paul J. Price on 04-13-25
By: Kevin Evers
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Agentic Artificial Intelligence
- Harnessing AI Agents to Reinvent Business, Work and Life
- By: Pascal Bornet, Jochen Wirtz, Thomas H. Davenport, and others
- Narrated by: Rory Young
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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This is a practical, non-technical guide for business leaders, entrepreneurs, and curious minds. This comprehensive guide on agentic AI cuts through the hype and offers a clear, jargon-free strategic roadmap to understanding and applying this technology. The authors bring a rare perspective, having implemented agentic AI across diverse organizations—from global enterprises to agile startups—witnessing both remarkable successes and sobering failures.
By: Pascal Bornet, and others
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The Six
- The Untold Story of the Titanic's Chinese Survivors
- By: Steven Schwankert
- Narrated by: Qarie Marshall
- Length: 8 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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When the Titanic sank on a cold night in 1912, barely 700 people escaped with their lives. Among them were six Chinese men. Arriving in New York, these six were met with suspicion and slander. Less than 24 hours later, they were expelled from the country and vanished. When historian Steven Schwankert first stumbled across the fact that eight Chinese nationals were on-board, of whom all but two survived, he couldn’t believe that there could still be untold personal histories from the Titanic. Now, at last, their story can be told.
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Lustful Appetites
- An Intimate History of Good Food and Wicked Sex
- By: Rachel Hope Cleves
- Narrated by: Eleanor Caudill
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Taking listeners on a gastronomic journey from Paris and London to New York, Chicago and San Francisco, Lustful Appetites reveals how this preoccupation changed the ways we eat and the ways we are intimate—while also creating stigmas that persist well into our own twenty-first century.
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Fascinating history lesson
- By Timster on 03-05-25
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The Determined Spy
- The Turbulent Life and Times of CIA Pioneer Frank Wisner
- By: Douglas Waller
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 19 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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An intimate and expertly researched biography of little-known early CIA leader Frank Wisner, whose behind-the-scenes influence on Cold War policy—and hundreds of highly secret anti-Soviet missions—resonates with the international crises we see today.
By: Douglas Waller
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The Ultimate Generative AI for Beginners Collection
- The 3-in-1 Guide to Learn AI, Deep Learning & ChatGPT in Just Minutes a Day with Hands-On Projects – Even if You’re Not Tech-Savvy
- By: Jordan Blake
- Narrated by: Susan Prater, Michael Robinson
- Length: 13 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Unlock the Power of Generative AI: Master Creativity, Deep Learning, and Advanced AI in One Essential Collection! Are you ready to revolutionize your creativity, career, and understanding of artificial intelligence? Whether you're an absolute beginner or looking to sharpen your AI expertise, this book collection takes you on a transformative journey through the world of Generative AI, Deep Learning, and Neural Networks. Discover How AI Can Save You Time, Enhance Creativity, and Propel Your Career Forward!
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AI made easy with this bundle
- By Diana Freel on 04-02-25
By: Jordan Blake
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No More Tears
- The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson
- By: Gardiner Harris
- Narrated by: Gardiner Harris
- Length: 14 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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One day in 2004, Gardiner Harris, a pharmaceutical reporter for The New York Times, was early for a flight and sat down at an airport bar. He struck up a conversation with the woman on the barstool next to him, who happened to be a drug sales rep for Johnson & Johnson. Her horrific story about unethical sales practices and the devastating impact they’d had on her family fundamentally changed the nature of how Harris would cover the company—and the entire pharmaceutical industry—for the Times.
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Amazing
- By Peter Ryers on 04-18-25
By: Gardiner Harris
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The Second Machine Age
- Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies
- By: Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Second Machine Age MIT's Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee—two thinkers at the forefront of their field—reveal the forces driving the reinvention of our lives and our economy. As the full impact of digital technologies is felt, we will realize immense bounty in the form of dazzling personal technology, advanced infrastructure, and near-boundless access to the cultural items that enrich our lives. Amid this bounty will also be wrenching change. Recent economic indicators reflect this shift: fewer people are working, and wages are falling even as productivity and profits soar.
By: Erik Brynjolfsson, and others
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Searches
- Selfhood in the Digital Age
- By: Vauhini Vara
- Narrated by: Vauhini Vara, Anastasia Davidson
- Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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When it was released to the public in November 2022, ChatGPT awakened the world to a secretive project: teaching AI-powered machines to write. Its creators had a sweeping ambition—to build machines that could not only communicate, but could do all kinds of other activities, better than humans ever could. But was this goal actually achievable? And if reached, would it lead to our liberation or our subjugation?
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Brilliant!
- By Lisa on 04-19-25
By: Vauhini Vara
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More Human
- How the Power of AI Can Transform the Way You Lead
- By: Jacqueline Carter, Rasmus Hougaard, Marissa Afton, and others
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lam
- Length: 4 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Humans have always been good at inventing tools that change the way we live and work—though not always good at adapting to those changes. Consider how the internet has given us instant access to gigabytes of data and yet has made us more distracted. Or how social media has enabled us to be more connected than ever, and yet it can also alienate or isolate us. Will the power of AI create a new era of robotic, impersonal efficiency, or will it catalyze a renaissance, redefining leadership and the world of work?
By: Jacqueline Carter, and others
What listeners say about The Thinking Machine
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- Amazon Customer
- 04-12-25
So good, it read like a movie, I bet it becomes one.
This book and Jensen's unpredictable journey are fascinating. Jensen, Nvidia and the future of AI will continue to evolve, but the story with all the collateral interviews of how it all came to be is riveting--even if you don't work in tech.
However, if you DO work in tech, AND happened to have ever had the life distorting opportunity of working with an unconventional, non linear, tech founder who is relentlessly vision driven and seemingly oblivious to common rationale or life events that are not obsessively committed to that vision, then you may find this book validating and inspiring.
The author's decision to read it himself was spot on. I could see the interviews in my mind's eye because of his subtle inflections and the details he infused in every chapter.
The book also offers insight into the technology that is radically altering our existence. We've all heard or thought about the concerns of AI, but I thought Jensen's view on these concerns, and that he isn't a scifi guy, well, it was really refreshing :)
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- John K. Clark
- 04-13-25
A wonderful book!
I read a lot of books but "The Thinking Machine" by Stephen Witt is the best one I've read in years. It's a biography of nVidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang but it's more than that, it's a concise history of Artificial Intelligence and of a company whose shares have increased in value by 300,000% since it went public in 1999. I highly recommend it.
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- Amazon Customer
- 04-16-25
A great story of legendary leadership by a visionary
This book is also a very useful primer into the whole AI development journey, from the backrooms of ‘outlier’ scientists to becoming a mainstream element of the global economy and human progress.
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- Shaun
- 04-16-25
From the days of early 3d graphics in the early 80’s to today’s crazy AI technology.
Takes a very complicated concepts and makes them easily digestible. A close look at a very driven and lucky man. Intelligence was only one piece of the puzzle. Well worth the time.
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