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Nvidia Explained: How It Became the World’s Most Powerful Company

November 13, 2026 · 49 min

Show notes

In June 2024, Nvidia became the most valuable corporation on Earth. Now, the actions of its CEO, Jensen Huang, threaten to tear it apart.


For this episode, we're revisiting an episode from the Intelligence Squared archive that helps explain why this company matters so much.


How did a company that started out making graphics chips for videogames become one of the most powerful corporations on Earth, and the driving force behind the AI revolution?


In his book The Thinking Machine, Stephen Witt chronicles Nvidia's extraordinary rise, revealing how it came to dominate the market for AI hardware and, in the process, reinvent the computer.


He joined author and Research Director at Demos Carl Miller to discuss the people, decisions and breakthroughs behind Nvidia's rise, and how one company became so central to the future of artificial intelligence.


This conversation was recorded before the latest developments at Nvidia.

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