Nvidia's CEO Has A Secret Weapon: Old-School Email 'Top-5' Lists

In an era when Silicon Valley execs chase the latest collaboration tools, Nvidia's CEO relies on a decidedly retro approach to staying connected to his $2 trillion chip empire. Every week, including Sunday evenings, Huang pores over "Top-5 Things" emails from employees across the company's 30,000-strong workforce—a practice that's been going on for decades.

The beauty of this system lies in its simplicity: Workers send bullet-pointed emails to their teams and executives (which Huang can access), providing unfiltered glimpses into what's happening on the ground. Huang specifically shuns formal reports, viewing them as too sanitized to catch early warning signs or emerging opportunities.

Case in point: These T5T emails helped him spot the potential for GPUs in AI long before it became today's hottest tech trend. But here's the twist - while Huang religiously reads these emails, he deliberately avoids writing his own T5Ts. "I have my own Top-5 Things that I keep to myself," he says, worried that employees might start mimicking his style and dilute the authentic intelligence he receives. It's a masterclass in maintaining genuine bottom-up communication in a tech giant that's become central to the AI revolution - all through the humble medium of