NVIDIA chief Jensen Huang is reportedly paranoid about the future of his company. During a recent podcast with Lex Fridman, Perplexity AI chief Aravind Srinivas revealed that he once asked Huang how he handles success and stays motivated.
Huang replied, “I am paranoid about going out of business. Every day I wake up in a sweat, thinking about how things could go wrong.”
Huang explained that in the hardware industry, planning two years in advance is crucial because fabricating chips takes time. “You need to have the architecture ready,” he said. “A mistake in one generation of architecture could set you back by two years compared to your competitor.”
NVIDIA, once primarily known within the gaming community for its graphics chips, is now the most valuable public company in the world. Shares of the chipmaker climbed 3.6% on Tuesday, raising its market cap to $3.34 trillion, surpassing Microsoft, now valued at $3.32 trillion.
Earlier this month, NVIDIA hit $3 trillion for the first time, overtaking Apple. NVIDIA shares have risen more than 170% this year and surged further after the company reported first-quarter earnings in May. The stock has increased over ninefold since the end of 2022, coinciding with the emergence of generative AI.
Huang has privately told colleagues that NVIDIA must ensure it doesn’t follow the path of companies like Cisco or Sun Microsystems, which experienced rapid rises and eventual falls.
Cisco, for example, became the most valuable company by selling routers during the dot-com bubble but hasn’t recovered from the sales drop-off it experienced when its hardware became a widely available commodity. Huang is determined to avoid a similar fate for NVIDIA.
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