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Stephen Witt’s The Thinking Machine, about the rise of Nvidia and its hard-driving leader Jensen Huang, has won the 2025 Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award.
It is the second year in succession that the £30,000 award has gone to a book about the rapid spread of generative artificial intelligence. Last year’s winner, Supremacy by Parmy Olson, examined the rivalry between OpenAI and DeepMind.
Richard Oldfield, chief executive of asset management group Schroders, presented Witt with the prize at a dinner in London on Wednesday, mentioning how the judges praised The Thinking Machine’s “unique insights” into the success of Huang and Nvidia. In October, the chipmaker became the first company to surpass a market value of $5tn.
Roula Khalaf, FT editor and chair of judges, called the book “a fascinating account of the making of one of the most consequential companies of our times”.
Television producer and investigative journalist Witt was shortlisted for the FT award in 2015 for his book How Music Got Free, the story of how piracy and peer-to-peer sharing disrupted the recorded music industry.
The judges also praised the five other shortlisted titles, each of which is awarded £10,000, for the way in which they summed up critical issues facing business and the world, including US-China rivalry and the quest for growth and prosperity.
The award, which is also supported by FT owner Nikkei, is now in its 21st year. Previous winners include Amy Edmondson in 2023 for Right Kind of Wrong, about how to learn from failure and take better risks, and Chris Miller’s Chip War in 2022, about the global battle for semiconductor supremacy.
The other 2025 finalists were: House of Huawei by Eva Dou, which investigates the rise of the Chinese technology company and its founder; Chokepoints by Edward Fishman, about the use of economic sanctions; How Progress Ends by Carl Benedikt Frey, on what decides the destiny of civilisations; Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, about the growth dilemma facing the US; and Breakneck by Dan Wang, contrasting the US and its arch-rival China.
The other judges of this year’s award were Mimi Alemayehou, founder and managing partner, Semai Ventures; Daisuke Arakawa, senior managing director for global business, Nikkei; Mitchell Baker, founder, former CEO and executive chair, Mozilla; entrepreneur, angel investor and board leader Sherry Coutu; Mohamed El-Erian, professor of practice at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, chief economic adviser, Allianz, and chair, Gramercy Funds Management; James Kondo, chair, International House of Japan; Adam Osborn, head of research, Asia ex Japan equities, Schroders; Randall Kroszner, economics professor at University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business; Nicolai Tangen, CEO, Norges Bank Investment Management; and Shriti Vadera, chair of Prudential and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
For more on this year’s award and previous winners, visit www.ft.com/bookaward