Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA) co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang built his company into a $2 trillion empire on the back of powerful chips riding the gaming, cryptocurrency, and now, artificial intelligence (AI) revolution. But why is he still working? He has now spilled the beans in a new interview.
What Happened: The 61-year-old Huang has been running Nvidia for half his life now, after founding it 31 years ago in Delaware.
With a wealth of $81.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Huang is currently the 20th richest person in the world.
Huang could retire now and he wouldn't have to work another day in his life. However, the "Godfather of GPU" has shown no signs of slowing down.
During a recent interview at the TiECon 2024 conference, Huang revealed that the reason is quite simple when he was asked what continues to drive him.
After taking a snipe at people who have answers that sound "smart," Huang said, "I don't have anything else to do."
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This had the audience in splits, who were likely expecting Huang to offer some wisdom.
Huang did say he does not have many options to turn to, unlike other people.
"In my case, it goes, you could be CEO of Nvidia... and then everything else next to it is undesirable."
"The flip side of it is, the job is incredibly fun. There is no other way to say it."
Clearly, Huang enjoys the job satisfaction that comes with leading the world's top company when it comes to AI chips. Nvidia has a 70% market share when it comes to AI chips, leaving every other company in the dust.
"It's just the joy of working with amazing people, doing things that frankly we cannot do ourselves.
Huang's Advice For Stanford Graduates
In another interview, Huang has a word of advice for Stanford graduates – he says they should embrace "pain" in order to succeed.
The reason behind this is Huang's belief that Stanford graduates have very high expectations, and that makes their resilience low.
"I don't know how to teach it to you except hope suffering happens to you."
One example of Huang's resilience is despite a disastrous elevator pitch, he managed to score an investment from venture capitalist, Don Valentine, who had also invested in Apple Inc. and Atari.
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