Nvidia: Managing Growth Amid a Chip Production Bottleneck

In May 2025, Jensen Huang, Founder and CEO of Nvidia, was at a Computex exhibition in Taiwan. He showcased the latest innovations that made the company the main driver of modern computing. However, Huang must have wondered how he could ensure Nvidia’s operational resilience.

Despite its technological leadership, Nvidia faced significant operational constraints. As a fabless semiconductor company, it depended on a complex network of specialised partners for chip fabrication, advanced packaging, high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and critical materials. Capacity shortages at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), limited CoWoS packaging capacity, constrained HBM supply, and geopolitical tensions arising from US-China technology restrictions threatened the company's ability to meet surging customer demand.

Huang must have wondered how to manage these supply chain bottlenecks while maintaining its technological leadership and capturing the enormous opportunities presented by the artificial intelligence revolution.

This case may be used for undergraduate, postgraduate and executive education classes. Learning objectives for the students are to understand how supply constraints can limit operations as severely as low demand; analyse supply chain resilience and evaluate strategies for managing bottlenecks and supplier dependence; assess how geopolitical tools, including trade restrictions and export controls, affect business strategy and apply the ecosystem model to understand how firms create value by creating a network of partners, suppliers and complementors.

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