When Nvidia crossed a staggering $5 trillion market valuation last month, becoming the world’s most valuable listed company, the tech world celebrated the achievement as a moment of unstoppable success. But for Nvidia’s leather-jacketed chief executive and founder Jensen Huang, the milestone has not brought comfort. It has intensified his worry.
Speaking on The Joe Rogan Experience, Huang revealed that he still works under the same pressure he felt when Nvidia was a tiny gaming-chip startup fighting for survival. And he would not have it any other way. “You know the phrase ‘30 days from going out of business’? I’ve used that for 33 years. The sense of vulnerability and insecurity doesn’t leave you,” he said.
Work schedule with no weekends, no holidays
Huang’s routine is relentless even at 62. He wakes up early, checks emails immediately, and never takes a day off. “Every single day. Not one day missed. Including Thanksgiving, Christmas. It’s exhausting. I’m always in a state of anxiety,” he told Joe Rogan.
For a leader whose company supplies the world’s most sought-after AI chips, constant vigilance feels like a responsibility, not a choice.
Failure as fuel
While many billionaires talk about vision and ambition, Huang says his motivation is fear. “I have a greater drive from not wanting to fail than wanting to succeed. Failure drives me more than greed or whatever it is,” he said on the podcast. That fear is not abstract. Nvidia almost collapsed before it ever became famous.
In the mid-1990s, the startup discovered its graphics chip for Sega’s next console was fundamentally flawed. Huang personally flew to Japan to break the bad news and then asked Sega for the last $5 million from their contract so Nvidia could survive.
Miraculously, Sega agreed to convert the payment into an investment that kept the company alive long enough to pivot into GPUs, then AI computing and now global dominance.
Family that works together
His intensity extends into his home life. His children, Madison and Spencer, now in their thirties, joined Nvidia after exploring careers in cooking, hospitality and marketing.
“My kids work every day. We have three people working every day and they want to work with me every day,” Huang said.