There are good reasons to hope that Europe – which has been left high and dry when it comes to innovation – has scrutinised Huang’s life with the same attention as China has

The life of Jensen Huang, the former head of Nvidia who was forced to leave the company he co-founded following an incredible saga of extramarital affairs, one of which was with a woman suspected by the US authorities of having links to Chinese intelligence, perhaps deserves to be told with a different approach to that of the smug chuckle of those who, faced with yet another fall from grace of yet another billionaire who has ruined his own life over a reckless fling with the wrong person, stand there, amused, shrugging their shoulders and simply saying: ‘There’s another one.’

The final chapter of Huang’s career can be studied as an example of what an entrepreneur should never do: put their own company at risk. But everything that came before that disastrous conclusion should be studied for the opposite reason: as an almost perfect example of what should never be missing – both in a personal story and in a country’s entrepreneurial history – when it comes to innovation. In short, Jensen Huang’s life embodies everything that Europe currently lacks if it is to even consider nurturing a Jensen Huang of its own.

Huang, who until a few hours ago was at the helm of a company whose market capitalisation had reached around 4,500 billion dollars, has become what he is thanks to the American capitalist system, within which ambitious funds bet many billions on start-ups – not for what they have already achieved, but for what they might achieve (Nvidia began as a company producing graphics chips designed for video games; it secured a significant first round of funding not thanks to a government endorsement but thanks to an ambitious project through which it would become the central infrastructure of future technology). Huang went on to become what he is today, in part, thanks to a rich, prolific and forward-looking capital market – one that Europe lacks – within which companies with a promising future can easily and quickly secure funding (Nvidia went public six years after its foundation) to grow into major players, partly on the back of an ambitious project (high-growth European firms, ten years after their foundation, raise on average 50 per cent less capital than their Silicon Valley counterparts). Finally, Huang has reached the position he held until just a few hours ago thanks to an American entrepreneurial ecosystem in which failure – as has already happened in the past to Steve Jobs and Elon Musk – is part of a company’s growth and not the beginning of the end.

The story is well known. Nvidia’s first product was a flop (1995). Its second project was a disaster (1996). Nvidia then came within a hair’s breadth of going under. In the 2000s, it went on to design faulty chips that cost it hundreds of millions. Europe, which sneers at Huang’s misadventures, which sighs at the slowdown in AI investment in America, which seems to be sitting there waiting for the AI bubble to burst, with the look of an old granny scolding her grandson for his mischief – ‘I told you it would end like this’ – It is a Europe that, before focusing on how we ended up with the horns, ought to spend a few moments understanding how, before the horns, we arrived at the unicorn – how the unicorn generated value, how the American entrepreneurial environment managed to nurture talent, retain it, give it the time to make mistakes, and provide it with the opportunity to secure funding. China, so to speak, has shown itself to be interested in spying on Dr Huang, in order to steal his secrets.

If Europe had kept tabs on Dr Huang’s life – without needing to intrude into his bedroom – perhaps it would have learnt a little more not only about how a manager can fall from grace, but also about how, when it comes to technology, one can rise to greatness from nothing, rather than simply ending up with one’s head in the sand.