By Eleanor Pringle
Publication Date: 2025-11-17 16:26:00
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says that leading a company like chipmaker Nvidia is a privilege but it also requires an individual to sacrifice their life to be of service to the business and its employees.
Huang, worth $165 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, recently gave a talk to students at the University of Cambridge, in which he described how his parents’ pursuit of success in the U.S. laid the foundation for his work ethic in building his own company. Huang, along with two friends, founded Nvidia in 1993 and over the past two decades has grown the business to a market cap of more than $4.6 trillion.
He launched Nvidia from a Denny’s dining booth without a business plan, he said, and had to learn his leadership and management skills on the job. After all, Nvidia is the first and only business he has ever led.
His mantra for success has been simple: “Don’t get bored and don’t get fired,” he said at the event earlier this month.
While that sounds straightforward enough, Huang also warned a life of extreme success in a highly competitive industry like tech is not without its drawbacks.
When discussing why he, as opposed to his engineer co-founders Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, landed the top job, Huang said it was because “they didn’t want the job.”
“In retrospect, I could have been smarter myself, and to be CEO is a lifetime of sacrifice,” Huang told his audience. “Most people think that it’s about leading and being in command…