Jensen Huang says he stays in a constant 'state of anxiety' despite Nvidia’s success: 'I work every day'

Jensen Huang said he still works every day of the week and checks emails early every morning.

Jensen Huang, the chief executive and co-founder of Nvidia, said he continues to work with the same pressure and uncertainty he felt in the company’s earliest years, even after Nvidia became the world’s most valuable listed firm. Speaking on "The Joe Rogan Experience", he said the scale of the company has not changed his mindset.

Huang explained that he had used the idea of being close to collapse for most of his career. “You know the phrase ‘30 days from going out of business,’ I’ve used for 33 years,” he said. “But the feeling doesn’t change. The sense of vulnerability, the sense of uncertainty, the sense of insecurity—it doesn’t leave you.”

He said he still works every day of the week and checks emails early every morning. “Every day. Every single day. Not one day missed. Including Thanksgiving, Christmas,” he said. He added that the routine was “exhausting” and said he was “always in a state of anxiety.”

Nvidia, which started as a graphics chip company, later expanded into hardware and software used widely in artificial intelligence systems. The company crossed a market value of $5 trillion last month. Despite that, Huang said his concern about failure remained. “I have a greater drive from not wanting to fail than the drive of wanting to succeed,” he said. “Failure drives me more than greed or whatever it is.”

He also recalled a major problem from the mid-1990s, when Nvidia discovered faults in its first graphics technology while it was developing a chip for Sega’s next gaming console. With limited funds left, Huang flew to Japan to inform Sega’s chief executive that the product would not work and that the project should be cancelled. At the same time, he said Nvidia needed the remaining $5 million payment from the contract to stay afloat. Sega eventually converted the amount into an investment, giving the company the funds it needed.

Huang said difficult periods were part of the learning process. “Suffering is part of the journey,” he said. “You will appreciate it for these horrible feelings that you have when things are not going so well. You will appreciate it so much more when they do go well.” He had earlier told Stanford students he hoped they would experience “ample doses of pain and suffering”, which he believed helped build resilience and realistic expectations.

Huang also spoke about his children’s involvement in the company. Madison and Spencer, both in their thirties, joined Nvidia as interns in 2020 and 2022. “My kids work every day. Both of my kids work at Nvidia. They work every day,” he said. He explained that they had pursued other interests after school — Madison studied at the Culinary Institute of America, while Spencer studied marketing in Chicago and later moved to Taiwan to learn Mandarin and opened a cocktail bar in Taipei.

“Now we have three people working every day and they want to work with me every day and so it’s a lot of work,” he said.