How Nvidia CEO motivates himself with funny paranoia

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang likes to joke around. He once said Nvidia was 30 days from going out of business just to inspire his engineers. Many years ago, that was true. He still says it. But considering Nvidia is now the most valuable chip company in the U.S., with a market capitalization of $310.8 billion, I think he has lost all credibility with that remark.

But Huang likes to remember Nvidia’s humble roots as it becomes a behemoth in AI and graphics chips. This week, Nvidia reported stellar earnings and noted its datacenter revenue surpassed its gaming revenue for the first time. Huang also said he expects the second half of 2020 to be great for gaming, as players hunker down in the pandemic and play games across all platforms. Nvidia is also rumored to be making a bid to buy Arm, the chip intellectual property company Softbank plans to sell.