By Geoff Weiss
Publication Date: 2026-06-15 09:00:00
Roughly nine years into his tenure at Nvidia, Antons Davis hopped on a call with CEO Jensen Huang to pitch his ideas.
Davis, who led design for several Nvidia gaming products, brought up an idea for how the company could build an educational ecosystem. Huang challenged him to move beyond theory and prove the concept. Instead, the Nvidia CEO urged him to build something.
“‘If you can show me, then we can talk about it,'” Davis recalls Huang telling him. “And that was a good reality check for me.”
Ultimately, that’s what Davis did. In 2022, he quit what would become one of the most coveted jobs in tech and embarked on a self-exploration journey of travel and retreats. During an ayahuasca ceremony, one message stuck: “I am a healer,” he recalled scribbling in a notebook.
That led him to found a life-coaching practice, Touch of Humane, and later, a tech startup, Osmo, that develops software for coaches.
Davis is an anomaly at Nvidia, which has seen its stock grow twelvefold since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022. The company’s soaring valuation and relative stability in an industry recently defined by layoffs have created powerful incentives for many to stay, as their stock options have exploded.
Some Nvidians chose to start their own ventures instead and said the company’s success gave them the freedom to walk away. Business Insider spoke to former Nvidia employees who left to become founders amid the height of the AI boom.
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