Stephen Witt Book order (chronological)

Nvidia, now as valuable as Apple and Microsoft, has transformed our world, yet its story remains largely untold. This account chronicles the ascent of one of the greatest technology companies of our time. In June 2024, thirty-one years after its inception in a diner, Nvidia emerged as the most valuable corporation globally. The narrative centers on how a designer of video game equipment dominated the AI hardware market, fundamentally reshaping computing. Central to this success is CEO Jensen Huang, who, over a decade ago, gambled his entire company on AI based on promising scientific results. With unprecedented access to Huang, his associates, investors, and employees, Stephen Witt reveals the company's remarkable rise and Huang's relentless leadership, making him a pivotal figure in Silicon Valley. The account details Nvidia's evolution into a provider of hundred-million-dollar supercomputers and Huang's defiance of Wall Street to realize his radical vision for computing, leading to immense wealth. It also highlights a revolution in computer architecture driven by a small group of innovative engineers. As Huang envisions a 'next industrial revolution' powered by new microchips, the future of AI unfolds with hyper-realistic avatars, autonomous robots, and generative art. This is the story of the company shaping our future.

The narrative explores Nvidia's remarkable ascent from a video game component manufacturer to a leader in AI computing hardware, culminating in its status as the third most-valuable company globally by March 2024. Central to this transformation is CEO Jensen Huang, whose bold bet on AI reshaped the tech landscape. The book details Huang's visionary leadership, the evolution of Nvidia's technology, and the innovative engineers behind this revolution. It also contemplates the profound implications of AI advancements for the future, heralding a new industrial era.

Journalist Stephen Witt traces the history of digital music piracy, from the German audio engineers who invented the mp3, to a North Carolina compact-disc manufacturing plant where factory worker Dell Glover leaked nearly two thousand albums over the course of a decade, to the high-rises of midtown Manhattan where music executive Doug Morris cornered the global market on rap, and, finally, into the darkest recesses of the Internet.