Here's the growth mindset that helped Nvidia's cofounder beat out Marc Benioff and Satya Nadella to be crowned the best-performing CEO of 2019

Rick Wilking/Reuters

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, shows the Drive Pegasus robotaxi AI computer at his keynote address at CES

• Nvidia's stock has surged over 1,000% in the last five years, and much of the credit goes to CEO and cofounder Jensen Huang's leadership and vision.
• He's so successful that Huang beat out other top leaders like Salesforce's Marc Benioff and Microsoft's Satya Nadella to earn the coveted spot atop Harvard Business Review's list of the most successful CEOs of 2019.
• It's Huang's attention to all areas of the business and his ability to speak the language of his employees that makes him so successful, according to senior director of robotics research Dieter Fox.
• Those qualities convinced Fox to come onboard and lead Nvidia's robotics lab, where the company is trying to build systems that can independently interact with humans.
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SEATTLE, WASHINGTON - Chip-maker Nvidia's stock rose over 1,078% in the last five years, a startling amount by any metrics.

That growth is due in no small part to CEO and cofounder Jensen Huang's decision to double down on computer chips that are increasingly being used to power new, artificial-intelligence-based applications.

It's why the esteemed Harvard Business Review named Huang the best-performing CEO of 2019, beating out luminaries like Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Salesforce's Marc Benioff, and BlackRock's Larry Fink.

But it's not just his business decisions that make Huang so successful. It's his ability to connect with employees across the company and the intimate understanding he has of the operations of all areas of the enterprise, according to senior director of robotics research Dieter Fox

It's his "detailed knowledge about things that go on. He's not just a CEO at the top level [or a] pure manager," he told Business Insider. "He understands the importance of the research. He goes to these conferences and is able to talk to researchers because he understands their language."

Huang was also instrumental in helping to bring the most skilled employees to Nvidia's robotics lab. "He's willing himself to talk to that person [and] tell them what his vision is. Because he has this really forward looking view of AI computing," Fox said.

Fox met Huang at a computer vision conference in Hawaii. It was all those qualities that convinced him to come onboard and lead the lab where Nvidia is trying to build next-generation robots that can interact with humans.

The facility combines deep robotics knowledge with experts in perception and computer vision, among other topics - a winning combination, according to Fox.

"It's just such a clear path forward because what these [current] robots currently are missing to get to this next level of understanding of their environment is really perception learning, and also simulation tools," he said.

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