36 People at NVIDIA Reporting to Jensen Huang

Lao Huang also needs to move towards vertical management

In NVIDIA, the market - cap leader, who can directly report to CEO Jensen Huang?

Thirty - six people.

This is the latest exposed figure.

These 36 people generally belong to seven functional sectors -

Strategy, Hardware, Software, AI, Public Relations, Networking, and an executive assistant to Jensen Huang.

Jensen Huang's New Layout

Next, let's take a look at what pieces Jensen Huang has placed in this year's personnel layout and what signals he has released, apart from the top - level strategic execution layer.

First of all, hardware remains the cornerstone of NVIDIA.

Among Jensen Huang's direct subordinates, nine are responsible for hardware - related businesses - including GPUs, telecommunications, DGX whole - machine systems, etc. - accounting for one - third of the total number.

Whether it's the AI bubble or the CUDA ecosystem, NVIDIA's foundation is ultimately hardware.

Notably, cutting - edge technologies such as AI, embodied intelligence, and autonomous driving are gradually becoming the "second pillar" in Jensen Huang's business map.

In this sector, Jensen Huang has deployed seven key figures, including Wu Xinzhou.

From the personnel allocation itself, it can be seen that NVIDIA's tentacles are rapidly spreading to those unexplored new frontiers. In Jensen Huang's words, it's the "zero - billion - dollar market."

This journey is destined to be a long - term battle. If lucky enough, it may even become Jensen Huang's last battle in his career.

Surprisingly, among Jensen Huang's direct senior executives, there are three in charge of public relations.

You may have no concept of this number. Let me give you an example. Elon Musk doesn't even have a public relations director.

The reason is that the two are in completely different ecological niches.

NVIDIA provides computing power, which is at the upstream of the entire industry and is closely related to practitioners in all walks of life. They need to be responsible for global enterprises, research institutions, government projects, and investors.

This means that in addition to making products, NVIDIA also has to spend a lot of effort to sort out the complex industrial chain -

It has to appease Wall Street, maintain the developer ecosystem, serve large customers, and take care of upstream and downstream partners. Even in special periods, it will be used to coordinate policies of different countries.

Therefore, Jensen Huang needs a systematic external communication mechanism.

However, the situation like Elon Musk, who doesn't have a public relations team at all, is also quite special.

After all, Musk has already built himself into the world's biggest "super - influencer." Musk himself is the strongest PR and GR.

Old Friends and New Faces

After looking at Jensen Huang's overall layout, let's see who the key figures under his command are.

First, let's look at three old friends - Jonah Alben, Dwight Diercks, Bill Dally.

These people have been working with Jensen Huang for a long time. Friends who have read Jensen Huang's biography should often see their names.

Jonah Alben

First up is the leader who has built half of NVIDIA's territory, the man whom Jensen Huang calls the "soul of GPU architecture" - Jonah Alben.

This year is Alben's 28th year at NVIDIA.

Since 2008, Alben has been the senior vice - president of NVIDIA's GPU engineering, fully responsible for the design and development of GPU architecture.

Before that, he was the vice - president of GPU engineering for four years and was the key promoter for NVIDIA's GPU to transition from discrete graphics cards to the AI era.

Alben joined NVIDIA in 1997, the year when the company launched its first - generation RIVA series of GPUs. His initial position was an ASIC design engineer, and he participated in NVIDIA's early graphics chips.

Before joining NVIDIA, he also worked as an ASIC engineer at Silicon Graphics.

Alben graduated from Stanford University, where he obtained a bachelor's degree in computer science and engineering and a master's degree in electrical engineering.

Currently, Alben has a total of 34 patents and manages a GPU engineering team of about a thousand people.

Dwight Diercks

Next is the other half of the cornerstone supporting NVIDIA's business empire - Jensen Huang's technical right - hand man, Dwight Diercks, who is in charge of software.

Diercks has been working with Jensen Huang for 31 years. He should be the senior - most executive among these direct subordinates, except for the co - founders.

As early as 1994, Diercks started his career at NVIDIA as a senior software engineer.

At that time, NVIDIA had just been established, and he was the 22nd employee to join. Over the past 30 years, he has accompanied Jensen Huang through all the ups and downs.

Many of the past stories about NVIDIA circulated outside the company are from his accounts.

In 1999, Diercks was promoted to vice - president and officially took charge of the software R & D system. By 2017, although NVIDIA had only a little over ten thousand employees in total, there were already more than three thousand software engineering teams reporting directly to him.

Eight years have passed, and NVIDIA's scale has more than tripled. It's hard to imagine how large Diercks' team is now.

Currently, he serves as the executive vice - president of software engineering at NVIDIA, fully responsible for developing core system software and platform - layer support for all the company's product lines, including PC and workstation graphics cards, deep - learning accelerators, autonomous driving platforms, AI frameworks, cloud computing, and gaming devices.

Before joining NVIDIA, Diercks worked as a system software engineer at Pellucid Inc. and also worked at Compaq Computer Corporation, engaged in multimedia software development.

Dierck graduated from Milwaukee School of Engineering in 1990, obtaining a bachelor's degree in computer science and engineering, and was awarded an honorary doctorate in engineering by the school in 2014.

Bill Dally

Now let's look at Bill Dally.

Dally is NVIDIA's chief scientist.

Before joining NVIDIA, he taught at Stanford University for 12 years and served as the dean of the Department of Computer Science. He is a recognized authority in the field of parallel computing.

At that time, he often spoke highly of NVIDIA.

In 2003, Jensen Huang visited his university office in person and offered him a part - time consulting job.

Six years later, after NVIDIA's persistent persuasion, Dally, who was supposed to devote his life to academics, finally agreed to become a full - time employee at NVIDIA.

Since then, Dally has become the soul figure of NVIDIA's R & D system. He not only promoted the evolution of GPUs from graphics processors to general - purpose parallel computing platforms but also laid the foundation for the birth of AI hardware architectures.

Because he didn't want to sit through history classes patiently, Dally dropped out of high school. While working as a car mechanic, he managed to get into college through his exam results.

Although he didn't have a high - school diploma, he obtained a bachelor's degree from Virginia Tech, a master's degree from Stanford University, and a doctorate from the California Institute of Technology.

In his early 30s, Dally was already a tenured professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

However, this scholar's life is not limited to the study.

In 1992, he flew a single - engine plane to New York, but encountered an oil - leakage accident on the way and was forced to make an emergency landing in the Long Island Sound.

When the plane hit the sea surface, the violent impact fractured his nose and made him dizzy. He almost sank into the sea with the plane.

Fortunately, a passing sailboat rescued him in time.

Two days later, he returned to the laboratory as if nothing had happened.

After looking at these three veteran figures, let's take a look at a new face at NVIDIA, and also the only Chinese among Jensen Huang's direct subordinates.

Wu Xinzhou

Wu Xinzhou is currently the vice - president of NVIDIA's automotive business, fully responsible for the strategic planning, product layout, and engineering execution of the automotive business.

Wu Xinzhou graduated from the Department of Electrical Engineering at Tsinghua University and then went to the University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign in the United States to pursue a master's and a doctorate in electrical engineering. He has more than 250 authorized US patents.

From 2006 to 2018, Wu Xinzhou worked at Qualcomm, successively responsible for several core R & D projects, making important contributions to Qualcomm in the fields of autonomous driving, precise positioning, and communication technologies.

His connection with XPeng Motors dates back to 2015.

At that time, Qualcomm was eyeing the autonomous driving industry and planned to acquire NXP. It was during this period that Wu Xinzhou was entrusted with an important task and became the head of Qualcomm's autonomous driving business.

Unfortunately, this acquisition ultimately failed due to "anti - monopoly" issues. However, this also allowed Wu Xinzhou to meet an "important man" in his life - He Xiaopeng.

On one hand, Qualcomm's acquisition failed; on the other hand, it was the time when He Xiaopeng was building an autonomous driving team and was eager to recruit talents.

Therefore, the two sides hit it off. Wu Xinzhou became the vice - president of XPeng Motors' autonomous driving center, reporting directly to He Xiaopeng and leading a technical team of more than a thousand people.

During his five - year tenure at XPeng, he fully led the strategic layout, product planning, and technology implementation of autonomous driving, promoting the implementation of core projects such as NGP and XNGP, and opening up a precedent for the mass - production of autonomous driving by Chinese brands.

The XPeng G6 can be regarded as the culmination of Wu Xinzhou's autonomous driving career. Just one month after the model was launched, the number of orders exceeded 40,000, and the "Max version" equipped with the high - end intelligent driving system accounted for as much as 70%.

However, just as XPeng Motors was gradually getting on the right track, another "important man" in Wu Xinzhou's life appeared - Jensen Huang.

It is reported that as early as when he was working at XPeng, Wu Xinzhou had a lot of interactions with NVIDIA due to project cooperation.

At that time, NVIDIA had firmly ranked first in the global high - computing - power autonomous driving SoC market, with a market share of up to 82.5%. However, despite its technological lead, the proportion of its automotive business in the company's total revenue was still quite limited.

It was at this critical juncture that NVIDIA decided to accelerate the layout of its autonomous driving business. Wu Xinzhou, with both algorithm and whole - vehicle factory experience, understanding both the underlying computing power and the needs of automobile manufacturers, was undoubtedly the ideal candidate in Jensen Huang's mind.

When leaving XPeng, Wu Xinzhou joked on Weibo: Although I'm at NVIDIA, I'm still a "XPeng friend."

Tomorrow is my first day at NVIDIA. Thanks to XPeng for sending me to Jensen Huang. According to Jensen Huang, I'm still working for XPeng, just not getting paid by him.

He also said that He Xiaopeng and Jensen Huang are the two most important men in his career.

After going to the United States and joining NVIDIA, Wu Xinzhou put forward the concept that "all movable things will eventually move towards automation" and brought the engineering experience he accumulated at Qualcomm and XPeng into NVIDIA's autonomous driving system. He led the systematic optimization of the perception and decision - making layer AI models, promoting NVIDIA to upgrade from hardware - driven to full - stack self - developed in the autonomous driving technology stack.

Meanwhile, NVIDIA's autonomous driving team in China is also expanding rapidly, the algorithm and data closed - loop system is continuously improving, and the platform capabilities have been significantly enhanced.

These contributions can be quantified - from the 2024 - 2025 fiscal year, NVIDIA's automotive business revenue soared from $281 million to $567 million, almost doubling