Nvidia seems to be resting on the philosophy of Jensen Huang: Expert

00:00 Speaker A

The architects of AI are the people of the year 2024-25. Time’s feature story begins with a rational person at the center of the AI ​​boom. That, of course, is Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Wong. Fortunately for me, I have someone who knows Jensen widely for a book that recently won the FT’s Business Book of the Year. Stephen Witt is the author of The Thinking Machine, Jensen Wong, Nvidia and the world’s most prestigious microchip. Uh Stephen, good to see you here. Congratulations on that win.

00:43 Speaker A

I know you poured your heart and soul into this book, nice to see W on board.

00:48 Speaker A

So we’ve talked a lot with Jensen here, uh Yahoo Finance, but usually he comes in for earnings or if he’s at an event. You really spent a lot of personal time with him.

01:02 Speaker A

What does he like? And I think a lot of people would be surprised to hear, I mean, he’s got like a AAA quick trigger on the temper front.

01:10 Speaker B

Yes, absolutely. You know, one of his executives told me that interacting with Jensen is like sticking your finger in an electrical socket. And I found that was true. Jensen is very, very intense. Um he’s hurt pretty bad. Um he’s really driven to succeed. He is also almost completely neurotic. I mean, he’s driven by negative emotions, fear of failure, guilt, even shame or things like making Jane wake up in the morning and work hard to make Nvidia a success.

01:43 Speaker B

So he really is a different kind of CEO. I think the other thing that wasn’t so obvious or obvious if you’re watching from the outside is how talented this guy is. He is a world class computer scientist. He is a world class engineer. He can design these microchips himself if he needs to. And this is a very rare quality in a CEO.

02:01 Speaker A

I had several takeaways from your book, but I think there were two that really hit home with me or bothered me. And we have a lot of people at Yahoo Finance who love Nvidia. I mean, they own it, they’ve owned this stock for years. One, you don’t get the sense that you have a succession plan in place.

02:18 Speaker B

None. None. Uh it’s just Jensen at the top and then like 60 people below him, right? There is no second in command, there is no clear successor. The board did not tell me anything about it. And Jensen said he didn’t offer any advice. He had no advice for succession planning. So it’s really kind of a one-man show. And when you think that it’s 8% or so of the S&P 500, by some measures, the single most valuable company of all time, it’s really all comfort.

02:51 Speaker B

In some ways this is a man’s philosophy. Now, Jensen’s employees are brilliant. People around him can become CEOs of other companies themselves if they need to. Um, but it’s really him at the top, some second tier and then basically a third tier of 60 or 70 people answering directly to Jensen.

03:13 Speaker A

I don’t know another way to put it. I mean, you mentioned that it’s such a big part of the SP 500. This is a company that is laying the groundwork for the next 100 years in this country. I mean, there they are at the center of all this stuff. But you also mentioned that two of his children work for the company. Are they like Jensen? Did you get to talk to them?

03:30 Speaker B

They are not. Uh none of Jensen’s kids really have a tech background. Her son managed a cocktail bar for many years and her daughter worked at fashion retailer LVMH in marketing. Um so they’re not in the succession plan. They couldn’t design microchips and the one you put in charge at Nvidia had to be an expert in just that. Um I mean, he loves his kids and he keeps them very close, uh but I don’t think they’re like him.

04:02 Speaker B

When they were young they made a deliberate decision not to sacrifice their health and sanity in the service of increasing the company’s share price. I think this is the right decision for most people.

04:12 Speaker A

You also talk a lot about Jensen’s negative thinking, you know, which I think will shock a lot of people out there too, because we see bits and pieces with him, a very polished, smiley guy, eating on various trips, signing autographs on people’s jackets and in one case, a bra. I mean, that’s not what we saw.

04:36 Speaker B

He’s brilliant on stage, but it’s a personality. It’s a persona he’s cultivated over the years. He is actually very uncomfortable on stage. I was in the green room with him once when he went to present to a group of 40 architects and uh was very nervous to go on stage. I couldn’t believe it. He was walking around like a prankster. He didn’t want to go there and he turned to me and said, you know, I hate public speaking.

05:04 Speaker B

And I can’t believe it, but it’s actually true. He doesn’t like it there that much. He is very good at it. You will never know. This is the thing about Jensen. He is the ultimate kind of artist. He is the ultimate engineer who will adapt himself to whatever the situation demands. And that’s what makes him good as a CEO, too. He is very, very adaptable. So, even things like public speaking where he seems completely natural, it’s almost completely engineered. It doesn’t come easily to him.

05:32 Speaker A

Given everything you’ve studied about Jensen, Nvidia, the company, the culture of the company, you also talked about the employees there, 50% of what’s the value, $25 million. I mean, that’s just wild stuff. 10 years from now, will Nvidia still dominate the industry?

05:47 Speaker B

There is a lot of risk. Uh the biggest risk right now, obviously, is Google. They just trained their world-class AI on Gemini in some measures, uh right now the best AI in benchmarks outside of the Nvidia stack. They use their own internally generated Tensor Processing Units or TPUs. That’s a big risk. If Google wins this AI risk, Nvidia will uh AI race, that is Nvidia will be in trouble. Uh, there are other risks. There’s Broadcom, there’s AMD, China is trying to build its own

06:17 Speaker B

A completely optional stack. It’s very easy to imagine a world where Nvidia’s stock price goes much lower from here. I think it’s even possible to imagine a world that goes up. Um I think Jensen is putting a lot of resources and effort into robotics training right now. If the robotics wave, if he can dominate that, it will mean several trillion dollars in market capitalization for this company.

06:45 Speaker A

Real quick, Stephen, uh does Jensen still return your uh messages, texts, emails, calls? I am always fascinated when someone writes a book like this.

06:53 Speaker B

You know, I think there were aspects of the book that he didn’t like. I, you know, this was not an authorized biography, although I had access to all of it. I used to be a little hard on him sometimes. Um but he’s the most competent person I’ve ever met. He is completely different from other tech CEOs I have met. And finally, it seems to me a good picture of Jensen. It shows the honest Jensen, it shows why he is successful. So, yes, we are still in communication.

07:22 Speaker B

I’m actually doing a story for the New Yorker on the coming wave of home uh consumer humanoid robots and Nvidia trying to dominate this market. Ah so I’m talking to them about it now.