[Special Leader 36] Jensen Huang, commander of Nvidia Innovation, the No. 1 market cap.

[CEONEWS = Reporter Kim So-young] Born in 1963 to a small family in Taipei, CEO Jensen Hwang immigrated to the United States with his family as a teenager and crossed language and cultural barriers. The boy, who had been having a hard time with poor English and assistant factory management, studied electrical engineering at Pacific University and developed "the persistence of digging into the 'reason' of the problem to the end." The advisors called him "the only student who asks the root cause, not just the answer."

In 1993, Jensen Huang founded the graphic chip startup Nvidia with three colleagues. At that time, graphic cards were simple PC accessories, but he declared that "parallel processing is the future of computing" and boldly reorganized the internal research team. In 1999, the company introduced the "GeForce 256" GPU, opening the world's first GPU era, and dominated the game market, boosting company sales. Since then, in the 2010s, it has expanded its scope to science and AI operations, becoming an "innovation platform" beyond a simple graphic chip company.

During the 2016 AI transition, Nvidia prepared for a bigger leap forward. CEO Hwang designed GPUs as an "ecosystem" that combines software, framework, and developer communities, not as chips for labs.

2017
Google, Facebook, and Amazon are secured as customers with 'Tesla P100'

2020
The launch of the A100 series opens the era of Petaflops-class AI learning.

2022
NVIDIA's market capitalization surpasses $1 trillion.

2025
Market capitalization of $3.2 trillion, becoming the world's No. 1 company

CEO Hwang emphasized, "We sell ecosystems, not chips," and organically combined hardware and software.

His leadership is different from the typical charismatic type. In the weekly "Technology Review Session," all executives and employees participate in data-based decision-making. CTO, CFO, and CMO are treated as equal partners, and global talent is hired in cooperation with Taiwan, India, and Israel research institutes. Jensen Hwang made openness and cooperation the core values of organizational culture, saying, "Rather than one genius, 1,000 collective intelligence changes the world."

Of course, risks coexisted in Nvidia's successful journey. Competition between AMD, Intel, and Google TPU, antitrust regulations in the United States, EU, and China, and the debate on generative AI ethics. However, CEO Hwang has responded with a strategy to reduce uncertainty by disclosing technology roadmaps and ethical guidelines, saying, "What we can control is technology completeness and ecosystem transparency."

There are three main keywords for Jensen Huang's success.

First, the spirit of challenge. The initial failure is immediately used as data for a leap forward.

Second, ecosystem design power. Beyond a single product, it builds platforms and communities at the same time.

Third, data-based persuasion. It exerts 'soft authority' that leads organizations and partners with logic and evidence.

The implications are clear for Korean companies. While converting the existing cash cow industry into AI, it is necessary to establish a super-cooperation system with external startups and academia. It is time to produce solid results through 'data-driven experiments' that build small successes, not just speed. Beyond the old dichotomy of speed or perfection, we must move on to an innovative model that realizes speed and perfection at the same time.

AI transition is not a technology, but a leadership issue. Next generation CEOs will have to rewrite their own DNA on the path that Jensen Huang has taken. Just as small data gathers to create huge innovations, your challenges will create a "golden egg" that will change the future.