As the head of the world's most valuable company, Nvidia CEO Huang Jensen currently has a fortune of nearly US$160 billion, ranking eighth on the world's richest list. Despite being so successful, he has never been able to enjoy a long leisurely vacation, and he has never been absent from the company's daily affairs for a day.
In the latest podcast, Huang admitted that fear, anxiety, and even worries about the company's bankruptcy have always been with him and driven him forward. He said,He works seven days a week, even on holidays. He has been in a "state of anxiety" because he is worried about Nvidia going bankrupt..
"You know the saying '30 days to bankruptcy', I've been using it for 33 years," Huang said. "But that feeling has never changed. That sense of vulnerability, uncertainty, insecurity - it's always been there."
Today, NVIDIA is one of the undoubted leaders in the artificial intelligence (AI) track. This company, which originally started as a graphics card manufacturer, has grown into a technology giant. The chips, systems and software it develops support the operation of most large-scale AI models in global cloud data centers. At the end of October this year, Nvidia became the first listed company with a market value exceeding US$5 trillion.
Even so, Huang Renxun still can't get rid of the sense of crisis that "the company may be destroyed overnight." “It’s really tiring,” he says, admitting that he’s “always in a state of anxiety.”
Huang Renxun revealed that in order to avoid the nightmare coming true, he still maintains a continuous work rhythm seven days a week. He works for the company every waking moment and starts checking emails at 4 a.m. "Every day, no exception, even Thanksgiving and Christmas," he said.
Jen-Hsun Huang recalls Nvidia’s near collapse in the mid-1990s. At that time, the company was developing chips for the next-generation game console of Sega, a well-known Japanese video game company, but discovered that its first-generation graphics technology had flaws.
At that time, the company's funds were about to run out, and Huang flew to Japan to confess to Sega's CEO that the product could not meet standards and suggested that the other party cancel the transaction. But he also admitted that Nvidia urgently needs the final payment of US$5 million from this cooperation to maintain operations. In the end, Sega converted the remaining payment into investment, injecting critical funds for the survival of this endangered start-up.
"Suffering is the only way to go in the (life/entrepreneurship) journey." Huang Renxun said.
Huang Renxun has previously sent a message to Stanford University students, hoping that they will "experience more setbacks and hardships." In his view, adversity is the key to building resilience, lowering expectations, and ultimately succeeding.
To this day, the fear of failure remains Huang’s biggest driving force.
“The fear of failure drives me forward more than the desire for success,” he said in the podcast. “What drives me is not greed or anything else, but fear of failure.”
Huang Renxun also mentioned that he is not the only "workaholic" in their family. His two children, Madison and Spencer, joined Nvidia as interns in 2020 and 2022 respectively, and also "work every day."