NVIDIA makes computer chips that allow digital inputs to be converted into outputs as efficiently as possible, and it turns out that the company’s human resources are structured much the same way.
In a recent conversation, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang revealed an unconventional philosophy behind his company’s organizational structure—one that deliberately rejects traditional corporate hierarchies in favor of a design inspired by computing architecture itself. The 61-year-old executive, who has led NVIDIA since co-founding it in 1993, explained why his $4 trillion company eschews divisions and business units in favor of what he calls a “computing stack” approach to human organization.
“Our architecture was designed for several things,” Huang explained. “It was designed to adapt well in a world of change, either caused by us or affecting us. And the reason for that is because technology changes fast. If you overcorrect on controllability, you are underserving a system’s ability to become agile and to adapt.”
This philosophy manifests in the company’s deliberate choice of language and organizational principles. “Our company uses words like ‘aligned’ instead of words like ‘control,'” Huang said. “We care about minimum bureaucracy and we want to make our processes as lightweight as possible. Now all of that is so that we can enhance efficiency, enhance agility and so on and so forth.”
But Huang’s most striking departure from conventional corporate wisdom lies in his rejection of traditional structural divisions. “We avoid things like words like ‘division,'” he noted. “When NVIDIA was first started, it was modern to talk about divisions, right? And I hated the word ‘divide.’ Why would you create an organization that’s fundamentally divided? I hated the word ‘business units.’ The reason for that is because why should anybody exist as one? Why don’t you leverage as much of the company’s resources as possible?”
Instead, Huang envisioned something fundamentally different. “I wanted a system that was organized much more like a computing unit, like a computer, to deliver on an output as efficiently as possible. And so the company’s organization looks a little bit like a computing stack.”
For Huang, organizational design must be intentional and contextual. “What is this mechanism that we’re trying to create and in what environment are we trying to survive in?” he asked. “The type of system you want to create should be consistent with that. The thing that always strikes me as odd is that every company’s org chart looks very similar, but they’re all different things and everybody is supposed to be somewhat different, but somehow they all have the same exact structure, same exact organization. Doesn’t seem to make sense to me.” NVIDIA’s looks very different, with Huang himself having 60 direct reports.
Huang’s approach appears to be yielding results. NVIDIA has become one of the world’s most valuable companies, dominating the AI chip market with an estimated 80-95% market share in data center GPUs used for artificial intelligence workloads. The company’s ability to rapidly pivot and adapt has been crucial to its success—from its origins in gaming graphics to becoming the backbone of the generative AI revolution. This organizational agility has allowed NVIDIA to move quickly as demand for its H100 and H200 chips has exploded, with the company reportedly able to marshal resources across the organization without the traditional bottlenecks of siloed business units.
The computing stack metaphor is particularly apt for a company whose products are themselves designed for maximum efficiency and interconnectivity. In computer architecture, a stack refers to layers of technology—from hardware to operating systems to applications—that work together seamlessly. Huang appears to have applied this same principle to human organization: rather than isolated divisions competing for resources, NVIDIA’s structure emphasizes alignment, minimal friction, and the ability to rapidly reconfigure resources based on needs. As AI continues to reshape industries and the pace of technological change accelerates, Huang’s unconventional approach may offer a blueprint for how companies can organize themselves not around bureaucratic convenience, but around the actual work they need to accomplish.