Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang lost his cool when compared to Elon Musk, yelled at his biographer

Jensen Huang

When you think of Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang, you probably picture the confident man in a leather jacket who’s helped turn the company into a giant in the world of AI. But behind that sharp image is someone who absolutely hates being compared to Elon Musk  so much so that he once yelled at his biographer during an interview, a report by Business Insider reveals.

Stephen Witt, the author of a new book called The Thinking Machine, spent a lot of time trying to understand who Jensen really is — beyond the headlines and conference keynotes. In one of their interviews, Witt said he brought up a clip from 1964 where sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke talks about a future where machines think faster than humans. That’s when things got awkward.

Huang, who had just wrapped up Nvidia’s hectic annual event and was clearly drained, didn’t like where the conversation was headed. Witt asked him about the future of AI and mentioned other tech leaders like Elon Musk and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, who often speak about big, bold futures shaped by artificial intelligence. Jensen suddenly stopped the interview and said, “I feel like you’re interviewing Elon right now, and not me.”That one sentence said a lot.

Unlike Musk, who talks about living on Mars or creating superintelligent AI, Huang isn’t interested in dreaming up sci-fi scenarios. In fact, he openly dislikes science fiction and says he’s never read a single Arthur C. Clarke book. His focus is practical — build what’s needed now, and take each step logically from there. He’s more of a “let’s fix what’s in front of us” guy than a “let’s imagine a crazy future” kind of person.

Witt also revealed that even though Huang seems like a natural on stage, he actually hates public speaking and gets nervous before events. And despite running one of the most important tech companies in the world, Huang doesn’t have a clear successor. He leads a flat team, with no second-in-command, it’s just him at the top, with 60 people reporting directly to him.