Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang explains why he reviews salaries of all 42,000 employees instead of HR

In most companies, salary reviews are handled quietly by the human resources department.
At Nvidia, things work very differently. CEO Jensen Huang personally reviews the pay of every single employee, all 42,000 of them.

At the end of each review cycle, Huang looks over the compensation data himself. He uses machine learning tools to sort through the huge amount of information quickly, but the final decision is always his. His reason is straightforward: take care of your people first, and everything else will fall into place.

This approach hasn’t been cheap. Nvidia’s operating expenses have doubled, but Huang sees it as money well spent. And the results seem to back him up — Nvidia is now worth around $4 trillion and is one of the biggest winners in the global artificial intelligence boom.

The company’s meteoric rise has made waves at the top. Three Nvidia board members have become billionaires, and Huang himself joined Forbes’ list of the world’s 10 richest people last year. But he’s quick to point out that this isn’t just about rewarding executives. His aim is to create fairness, motivation, and a sense of belonging at every level of the company.