Nvidia's stock price has soared 12 times since the advent of ChatGPT, and its ordinary jobs are regarded as a "gold mine." But a counter-intuitive phenomenon is taking place in Silicon Valley.A group of core employees voluntarily gave up millions of dollars in unvested stocks, chose to take off the "golden handcuffs" and join the wave of AI entrepreneurship.
Nvidia's stock unlocking mechanism in batches is one of the most effective talent retention methods in the technology industry. It creates a perpetual anticipation that the next batch of stock is always three months away. This moving target has led countless people to choose to wait another quarter, another year.
Adnan Boz, who left his job in 2023 to found SoftwareAgent.AI, an automation programming company, admitted that he had postponed his resignation twice, each time to wait for the next stock vesting. It wasn't until the age of 54 that he realized that if he kept waiting for the "perfect moment," that moment would never come.
However, for this group of entrepreneurs,The window of opportunity created by the AI revolution is more precious than any short-term gains.The core knowledge they have accumulated at NVIDIA such as AI infrastructure and high-performance computing can only exert its greatest value in the current stage of rapid formation of the ecosystem.
Mo Nasir, who left his job in 2024 to found Altrina, an AI agency for regulated industries, put it bluntly:"If you really want to have a chance to make a billion dollars, it's almost impossible to do it as an employee." He revealed that if Altrina were sold at the current pre-seed valuation, the return would be ten times what he gave up the stock.
More importantly, the hierarchical structure of large companies ultimately cannot satisfy the true creators. Antons Davis, who has been working at Nvidia for nearly nine years, once proposed the idea of an education ecosystem to Jensen Huang, and the reply he received was "We will talk about it after we build something."
This sentence awakened him,In 2022, he gave up millions of dollars in stock and resigned. He first founded the life coaching service Touch of Humane, and then launched Osmo, a software platform for professional coaches.
It is worth mentioning that Nvidia’s success has become the best springboard for these entrepreneurs.The rise in the company's stock price has allowed them to obtain a financial buffer of 3-5 years by selling some shares, and the status of "former Nvidia employee" itself is a passport that can quickly gain the trust of investors and customers.
Many founders have said that Nvidia's reputation will help them build trust with investors and customers in the future, and Huang Renxun's management style has also profoundly affected their entrepreneurial mentality.
Adnan Boz described,Huang Renxun is like a school, allowing employees to learn to accept failure and regard setbacks as part of building new things. This tolerance for mistakes has become one of the most important nutrients when starting a business.
In fact, this talent flow is not Nvidia's loss.These new startups will eventually use Nvidia's hardware and platforms, and instead continue to expand the boundaries of the entire AI market.. When the best talents are willing to give up the most generous salaries in order to create new things, it just shows that this AI revolution is far from reaching its peak.
