When your company becomes the first in history to cross $5 trillion in market value, you might think the CEO would relax a little. Not Jensen Huang. The Nvidia (NVDA) chief says he's still running scared, and that feeling hasn't budged in over three decades.
Speaking on "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast, Huang described a work routine that sounds exhausting just hearing about it. His day starts at 4 a.m. with email checks, and he works every single day including holidays. The scale of Nvidia hasn't changed how he thinks about the business, apparently.
The Anxiety Never Stops
"You know the phrase '30 days from going out of business,' I've used for 33 years," Huang told host Joe Rogan. "It is exhausting. Always in a state of anxiety." This from a guy leading the company at the center of the AI hardware revolution, no less. He explained that this mindset drives how Nvidia develops its processors and adapts to the breakneck pace of computing demands.
Huang also pinpointed the moment that signaled AI's acceleration. The 2012 AlexNet model, which was trained on Nvidia graphics cards, demonstrated how rapidly deep learning was advancing. That breakthrough showed him the company needed to scale its technology even faster to maintain its competitive edge.
Meanwhile, Nvidia hit that historic $5 trillion market cap in October as demand for its AI chips continued surging. Apparently that milestone didn't ease Huang's nerves much.
The Crisis That Changed Everything
There's a reason Huang thinks this way, and it traces back to a near-death experience from Nvidia's early days. In the mid-1990s, the company was developing technology for Sega's next game console when they discovered serious flaws in their first graphics chip.
With cash running out, Huang flew to Japan to deliver bad news. He told Sega the chip wouldn't work and the contract needed to end. But here's the twist: he also told them Nvidia still needed that final $5 million payment to survive.
Sega could have walked away. Instead, according to Huang, they converted the remaining payment into an investment, giving Nvidia just enough runway to keep operating. That moment shaped how he thinks about risk and long-term decisions ever since.
"For all of you Stanford students, I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering," Huang said at a Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research summit in March 2024. His point? People with very high expectations tend to have very low resilience. Pain builds character, or something like that.
The Work Ethic Runs in the Family
Huang's relentless pace isn't just a personal quirk. It extends to his family as well. His children, Madison Huang and Spencer Huang, joined Nvidia as interns in 2020 and 2022 respectively and now work there full time. According to their father, both work every single day, matching the rhythm he's maintained since founding the company.
Before joining Nvidia, Madison studied at the Culinary Institute of America, while Spencer took a more winding path. He studied marketing in Chicago, moved to Taiwan to learn Mandarin, and even opened a cocktail bar in Taipei before eventually landing at the family business.
So there you have it. The CEO of one of the world's most valuable companies still feels like he's perpetually on the edge of disaster. Whether that's paranoia, discipline, or just what it takes to stay on top in the chip business, it's clearly working. Though it sounds absolutely exhausting.