The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant

by Tae Kim

The HP executives asked whether Nvidia would give HP unlimited indemnification against lawsuits if something went wrong—basically asking Nvidia to assume all the legal risk if faulty GPUs caused a failure of HP’s servers. This was a surprise to Moore, who didn’t know the HP executives would start a legal negotiation. He was glad to have Jensen present at the meeting to reply to the unexpected question. Jensen pointed out the problem with unlimited liability. The graphics chip is a small part of the server, so Nvidia could not indemnify the full value of the server. Doing so would entail a massive and unreasonable financial risk. Instead, he proposed that Nvidia tie indemnity to something more concrete: the amount of annual business the server group did with his company. If HP spent $10 million per year on cards, Nvidia would indemnify them for up to $10 million in the event of component failures. The protection would grow as the business grew. The HP executives accepted the deal on the spot, and Moore walked out of the meeting pleased with the outcome. Afterward, he went to Jensen. “Thank you for coming to the meeting. I really appreciated it,” Moore said. Jensen, however, saw the meeting differently. “It ended well, but Derik, let me tell you your failure here.” The remark shocked Moore. “It scared the crap out of me,” he recalled. “The failure here was you did not tell us what the company was going to ask in advance,” Jensen said. “Nobody likes surprises. Don’t ever let ...