So, nice to be here. Thanks. Welcome to the inaugural podcast for a bit personal.
The inaugural?
Yeah, the inaugural. You're the first one.
So, I'm the first.
You were the first that I asked and you said yes at one second.
Oh dear.
So, you regret you said yes.
Well, I didn't realize it was going to be a bit personal.
Yeah. Yeah. We're going to go deep.
Okay. Yeah. Well, just keep it nice and shallow. You like that better anyway.
So, okay. So, what do you... So, the concept of the podcast is that the general public is really very interested in people like you that are determining the future of technology, which is the future of their world, right? So, let's find out what your values are, your personal story behind your public success. You like that concept?
No, not really.
Yeah. Not really. But you're a celebrity.
People want to know about celebrities. I don't see myself as a celebrity and I'm not a celebrity. I just happen to run a very important company and I'm the CEO of one of the most successful technology companies in history. We made some good decisions a long time ago.
In 1993, we wanted to reinvent computing and we had a perspective about how computers ought to be built. It was a not very popular view for a very long time and it was rather controversial, in fact. Everybody thought that microprocessors and CPUs—and this is the time you and I met, most people don't realize, the audience probably doesn't realize that you and I met in 1994, probably late 1993. And so Nvidia was trying to do then what we're trying to do now: reinvent computing.
At the time in Silicon Valley, it was during the era of CPUs and Moore's law and the PC revolution.
Mm-hmm.
And in fact, all of your early customers, right, were all PC chipset startups. They were the formation of the fabulous semiconductor industry: Cirrus Logic, S3, Western Digital, Trident. Remember all those companies?
Yes.
Those were the forefathers of Nvidia. And here we are, we're trying to create a new computing approach. It took 33 years for this to happen, but I just happened to be the CEO of that company. That's all.
And it happened really—maybe not for you, but for the world—it happened very suddenly. It was November of 2023, the whole world changed. So how was that transition?
Well, in order to create the future, you have to live in the future long before it happens. And to be honest, when we first started CUDA, we invented the technology. The thing that I'm really proud about Nvidia is we're great at inventing technology, but then inventing products to carry the technology to market.
There are countless companies and researchers/inventors who have created technology, and they're the people that say things like, "Oh, I did that before," or "I thought of that," or "I invented that." It always kills me that all these great inventors didn't also have the benefit of having great product inventors. These are the innovators that take these inventions and then invent products to take it to market. But then you also have to invent strategies to take it to market, and you have to invent, in fact, even the market. You have to shape the market to receive your products that you invented and the strategies that you developed.
Nvidia was really built to be a company that can invent technology, invent products, invent strategies, and invent ecosystems and markets—and we've done that repeatedly. And so I think in a lot of ways I've been living in this future for a long time. There was a strategy a long time ago—we don't do it as much anymore—but it was called "CUDA Everywhere." People tell stories of me schlepping CUDA to universities and startup companies and established companies. I schlepped CUDA everywhere, and sometimes there'd be an audience of literally three people, and I would pull out my laptop and present CUDA and tell them about why this is going to change the world. I visited researchers and laboratories and went to conferences. I put on more CUDA miles than any human in the world.
So for a long time, I've been living in this future. You tell the story long enough, you kind of feel like it's happened. And so I think all of this is still a great delight. In my mind, it's not surprising because the first principles that we built the company on are fundamental principles. They're not based on a hunch or a taste; they're on fundamental principles of computer science. And so what is happening now is, in a lot of ways, inevitable.
The thing that I would say, though, is that by making something go incredibly fast—if you make something go a thousand times faster or a thousand times larger or a thousand times smaller—some phase change happens, and the state that it results in is surprising. We knew that deep learning could be a lot larger, which is the reason why we pivoted the whole company behind it. We knew that AlexNet couldn't have been the end of it and that the architecture is something that's quite scalable and the amount of data in the world is abundant.
The one technology that I knew was going to be an obstacle to us was unsupervised learning or self-supervised learning—that the computer could learn by itself without human labeling, because humans would be the bottleneck. When that happened, I knew we were off to the races. I was just on an investor roadshow, and people tell me that I told them right around that time that there was a phase change. If you go back and listen to my earnings calls when I jump into a topic that's really important for the world, I emphasized it really clearly. I talked about it on every single investor roadshow, and everywhere I go, I would talk about those things—that self-supervised learning has really made a great achievement. And then the scaling laws were unleashed, and then we were boom, off to the races.
The type of problems we're able to solve as a result of that is still surprising to me. You knew the phase shift would come and the platform shift would come, but as a result of all that, we're now learning the language of proteins, the language of cells, the language of quantum, and the language of all these representations of all these different things. The language that we used to represent information in the past is now being reinvented—everything from geometries and textures to now 3D Gaussian splats and all of these different representations.
It's kind of like all of a sudden we became so smart that the English language got changed, okay? That we no longer use the words and vocabulary and structure and grammar that we use because all of a sudden we became so much smarter that we can communicate in another dimension. It's kind of like that movie *Arrival*—all of a sudden we're just looking at shapes. And the amount of information just looking at shapes allows us to communicate in a much deeper way and much faster way. So it's incredible that we're not only solving problems that are completely unimaginable before, we're doing it at a speed now where Nvidia's time is a thousand times faster than Moore's law time. The next 10 years is going to be extraordinary.
So the kind of confidence that it takes to do what you did—to be able to see into the future and be absolutely confident that it's going to happen. As you said earlier, we met in 1994. I was in my 20s; you maybe are a little bit older than me, hopefully.
I was 30 when...
Yeah. So I remember our very first meeting at the headquarters in Sunnyvale.
Exactly. It's a massage parlor or something.
Yeah, acupuncture parlor.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Anyway, I was interviewing you for a magazine and I said, "So, Jensen, are you worried about the rotating door in Silicon Valley, people coming and going?" because a lot of CEOs were complaining about this. And again, you're 30 years old, and you were like, "Hmm, Jody, Nvidia is neither a church nor a prison. You don't have to come and you don't have to stay." I remember being so impressed. I was like, "Who is this guy?" Such confidence and such wisdom at a young age. And I remember Morris Chang has a similar story when he first met you—that you immediately said, "I'm going to be your biggest customer or one of your biggest customers." And he's like, "Wow, that is a lot of gumption." So, where did that confidence come from at such an early age?
Well, it's rough to know everything. I'm just kidding. No, by the way, Morris will be happy to know Nvidia is TSMC's largest customer now.
Yeah, I'm sure he's very proud of you.
Yeah, and I'm proud of him. We were his largest customer during the PC revolution, and now we're his largest customer again, and I'm very happy about that.
I say that you have to believe what you believe. Your belief shouldn't be based on anecdotal—"somebody said something, therefore you believe it." You have to reason through: for what reason do you believe this? Break down your reasoning into sound first principles, and then you have to check it on a regular basis—that these principles that you're building everything on are sound. If that foundation changes for some reason—maybe it wasn't defined by physics or anchored in ground truth—then you re-evaluate and move on. I've always lived in that way.
If you believe in something, you owe it to yourself to do something about it. I believed in what we're doing. I believed it in 1993, I believe it today. And therefore, if you believe this, then so what? Just keep reasoning through it. I'm doing that reasoning exercise in my head continuously. I'm constantly re-evaluating the past. Yesterday we were in so many different meetings, and I would reason through the past again: this is how we got here, and notice all of those assumptions were right, but some of those assumptions were in fact wrong. As it led to this moment, we were agile and we readjusted. It's always good to go back in time and re-reason through that; it teaches you how to reason forward.
And so because I've always done that, I just live in that truth. To this day, I still feel like I'm an employee of this company. I care about this company a lot, but there are a lot of employees that care about this company a lot. The CEO was always designed to be in a well-governed company—the CEO reports to the board of directors, and the board of directors reports to shareholders. If the CEO doesn't do his job according to 12 or 15 board members, the CEO is let go. So therefore, it's employment in an institution. It's not like a church because not everybody gets to come, and it's not like a prison because not everybody has to stay, right?
That state of mind keeps you grounded. It keeps you humble and keeps you fresh. You're always earning your job. Sometimes people ask me, "Jensen, do you love your job?" I don't love my job every day, but I do it to my mightiest every day. I think that comes from the whole package of recognizing that, one, I'm the best person for the job—I believe that—and two, I have to earn being the best person for that job every day.
So you have been... you are Nvidia and Nvidia is you. That's what you've become.
I'm the most frequently taken picture of the people of Nvidia.
Yeah. But can there really be a next CEO of this company?
Well, there will never be one like me, and the reason for that is because I was raised by the company. When I first started Nvidia, I didn't know anything about being CEO or strategist or product maker or industry creator. I didn't know how to do any of that. I knew how to raise money. I didn't know how to talk to shareholders, understand the sensibility of country leaders and company leaders. I didn't know how to create a culture. I couldn't formulate a company strategy if I tried. That was day one.
In these 33 years, I've become better at all of that. If there's ever a Yoda of company strategies and industry creators, it probably looks like a short little guy like me. I've dedicated my career to learning these things, and I'm a good student. I also bring to the job a level of intensity and deep care that it's harder to hire into. In a lot of ways, Nvidia is one of my children, and I care about it as if it's one of my children. My children even help me raise those children.
I have a feeling about this company that you can't easily replace by hiring somebody who's just good at doing something. On the other hand, the way the Nvidia management team is set up, I've got almost 60 direct reports. There are 60 people who could be world-class CEOs for many other companies, and I reason in front of them constantly. Every single decision I've made, I've made in front of them. I've reasoned through it in front of them. I've spoken about successes, setbacks, challenges, and adversity all in front of them. So in a lot of ways, Nvidia has 61 CEOs. They care deeply about this company; many of them have been here for 33 years. Nvidia has just been built like no other company ever has been, and it also speaks to our resilience.
Obviously that structure you have is very legendary in the industry now—these nearly 60 reports. In order for that to work, those people have to be exceptional specifically for Nvidia. Tell me a little bit about how you curate those people. There's been many times that you didn't hire into a position until you found the right person—thinking specifically of Colette. You interviewed 22 CFOs before you hired her, and now she's a legend in her own right on Wall Street. How did you choose her, and what do you look for?
An empty chair is better than a chair filled with the wrong person, and so I'm never in a hurry. The company will keep moving on, and whether it's a missing CEO or missing VP of anything, the company will keep moving on. You just have to have the confidence of what I just said. If you can convince yourself of those two ideas—the empty chair and that the company is going to keep moving on—then it buys you enormous amounts of time until you find somebody that is a combination of a lot of things, including that you just like them.
Colette, on her first week, I think she asked me, "Jensen, how long do you want me to be your CFO?" And I said, "For as long as we shall live and death do us part." Because the alternative doesn't make sense. For what reason is there an end date? The end date is when she decides Nvidia is no longer right for her. That applies to Colette, and that applies to all 60 of the Nvidia direct reports. I keep chairs open for a long time. The company just keeps on carrying on, and people swarm the mission. Worst case, I'll do my best and just carry on.
That's just a philosophy: don't ever fill a chair with the wrong person. Wait until the right person comes along. I'm asked all the time what makes a great employee or leader. Surprisingly, I don't have the answer. They're all smart and competent. You find me a CFO somewhere and I promise you they're competent. And yet, in the end, what makes the magic of Nvidia is a combination of the chemistry of the people that are together, but mostly it's just corporate character. That character comes from somewhere.
Somehow... there are a lot of companies building chips. We invented the GPU, but from a volume perspective, we're the smallest GPU company in the world. Everybody makes more GPUs than I do. So clearly, clearly it's not that. There's a magic in the corporate character and how teams come together during adversity. People see us just kind of strolling through life, but getting Grace Blackwell into production almost broke our company's back, but we wouldn't let it. It is just extraordinarily complicated and incredibly large scale, and the expectations were incredible. For us to live up to it and exceed it with it almost breaking our back—that's 100% character. That's not intelligence. That's 100% character.
You just can't interview that into existence. And the thing that I believe is this: I kind of believe that you can bring almost anybody into Nvidia and we will instill character into you. That is the magic of our company—that somehow we could suffer pain and endure incredible challenges and come out of the other side. We could do it over and over again. Very few companies can do that as a team. Usually, somebody gets left behind because of a bad feeling or because they were blamed and fired.
It's always somebody's fault—let's be clear about building companies and teams. At the end of the game, we lost as a team, but there's no question who dropped the pass. We have to be clear about that. And because we have such a safe environment, all the people who dropped passes in the past—including myself, and I've dropped plenty of passes while everybody was watching—nobody's been fired for dropping passes. This company has developed a culture of tolerance and forgiveness and learning from mistakes. So long as the teammates gave everything of themselves, that's good enough for me.
You have a reputation for really not liking to fire people. So your theory is that the team has to make them better?
Yeah, like the company made me better. I wasn't then what I am today. If somebody were to ask me what I learned at Nvidia and write a book, I wouldn't even know where to start. This company gave me the chance to become what I am, and it gave the entire management team the opportunity to become what they are. 100% of those 60 people are different today than they were when they started. I can tell you they're great today; we were just fine in the beginning.
So the company tortured greatness out of us. The company forged incredible character into us. That's the magic—that you could do that without losing the person. Can you hire people into that? Yes, I believe so. The people that come in, they're good. So long as I enjoy working with them—they can't be a jerk, they can't be self-serving, and they have to be able to answer simple questions. That's my trigger. To the extent that they can be transparent, vulnerable, and learn, we'll forge greatness into them.
*[Sponsor break for GSME]* So, you talk a lot about pain and suffering as kind of building blocks of Nvidia.
That's our secret sauce.
Yeah. And you've said before that...
Yeah, "Come work with me, that's my gift."
It's very attractive.
Yeah, exactly.
Was there ever any sacrifice that you made that was too big for what you accomplished at Nvidia?
No, everything was worth it. I was fortunate because Lori, Madison, and Spencer kind of grew up with the company. Lori always had a great interest and dedicated herself to read everything and learn everything. She's never missed an event, not even one of our campy little shareholder meetings back in the old days. Her interest and dedication rubbed off on the kids. They read everything, watched everything, came to everything. They probably listened to more bad speeches of mine than any human ever.
I was fortunate that they had the interest in the company and loved it the way I loved it. So my sacrifices probably didn't translate directly into a sacrifice for them. I missed most of the karate tournaments and nearly all their practices. Back in the old days, we didn't have smartphones, so going to work meant missing every dinner and every weekend. That's what we did. I was fortunate that our family chemistry made it possible for them to not feel alienated.
That integration worked for me, too. My youngest went to meet Morris Chang when he was four months old.
Which one did I meet?
You met Elijah. Then my youngest is Hudson.
Yeah, he interviewed you when...
That's right, he was terrific. What's he doing now?
He works at Ferrari.
Wow, very cool. I know who to call to get the first EV.
Exactly.
And then the youngest is going to be a filmmaker at NYU. One of these days when they make a documentary of you, I guess.
One of your best characteristics is that although you're the hardest working billionaire in the world, when you're with someone, they have your undivided attention. You make people feel special. Tell me a little bit about that intentionality.
I appreciate that. I think it's humility and respect. I love watching people cook or do gardening—things they love and are good at. When we go to restaurants, I always prefer to sit at the bar, closer to the kitchen. I love watching people do their work because I respect their artistry and craft. I'm inspired by them dedicating themselves to the work they do. You're always learning something and you come out of that moment enriched.
Another perspective is I always want to help. I want your show to be great—not for me, but for you. And I want your work to be great. When a CEO calls me to ask for a partnership, I want them to succeed for their benefit. I always enjoyed meeting Julie Sweet; I want her to succeed. I love watching other people succeed and I love that I was able to help a little bit. I'm here because I want you to be able to launch this inaugural "A Bit Personal"... is that what you call it?
Yeah, "A Bit Personal."
"A Little Bit Too Personal"—I bet that's catchier.
We'll go rebrand it. It came from Jensen.
This philosophy of pain and suffering... Alex Karp said that you can either enjoy your 20s or you can be successful. Do you believe that philosophy? What is the message to young people about their career?
Alex is so smart and has deep philosophies. I'm kind of low-key about that stuff. I think it's incredible that Morris worked until his 80s and he's still sharp as a knife. If there's a definition of a "late bloomer" in Wikipedia, it's probably going to be a picture of Morris. How is that a bad thing—that you get to enjoy the most productive times of your life for 50 years? I'm kind of that same cut. I would really love that I'm doing something productive rather than "I'm going to go travel the world." I'm traveling the world now anyway.
During our 20s, I agree I felt smarter. I could concentrate with greater intensity and think faster. But the thing that is completely missed is the ability to be wiser, more nuanced, and more strategic. I don't know how you learn those things by not living them. You could watch YouTube and be sufficiently empathetic to gain that wisdom by watching—imitation learning is real—but there's the grit that comes with enduring the knowledge of how to deal with pain and suffering and the emotional toil.
There are real fears in running companies. We have the lives of tens of thousands of people in the decisions we make. When things are not going well, to not feel fear or anxiety makes you a bad leader. I don't know how you learn those things without going through it. I have something today that I really didn't have in my 30s. As a result, even though I'm not thinking as fast as I used to, I come to the right answers faster because I have the benefit of wisdom and patterns. I'll go toe-to-toe with a 20-year-old all day long. They got nothing on me.
Let's get a little bit "too personal." Tell me about the highlights and lowlights of your childhood—coming from Taiwan to the US and that experience.
I don't think I'm extraordinarily intelligent; I'm not an outlier. When I was a kid, I did very well on national tests, and I remember my mom always telling me that I'm incredibly smart. Whether that was true or not, the fact that she kept saying it put a burden on me to need to be smart. When you set expectations that are beyond reason on people or a company, in a lot of ways they rise to it. In my case, it helped me rise.
Another one is just witnessing someone do something. We were learning how to speak English, and my mom didn't even know how to speak it, but it didn't stop her from teaching us every day. She just bought a Webster's dictionary, wrote the English word and the Chinese translation, and made us memorize them. I don't know if we were pronouncing it right, but that taught me something about someone with incredible will: even if you don't know how to do something, it shouldn't stop you. "How hard can it be?"
I remember going to Kentucky at 9 years old. Oneida Baptist Institute was on top of a hill, and every day I had to walk down, cross a river on a hanging bridge, and then cross a large field to get to school. Along the way, kids were rough on me because I was the first Chinese kid they'd seen in 1973. The hanging bridge had missing wooden planks, and they'd be on the other side waiting for me. I did that every day. Pain and suffering. In the afternoons, my job was to clean the bathrooms. My older brother's job was to work in the tobacco farm.
Do any of those people know where you are now?
The president of Oneida Baptist Institute just sent me an email; they send me Christmas presents every year because they know I love sausage and gravy and biscuits.
And you learned that in Kentucky.
Oh yeah. When I went back for my 45th birthday, the cafeteria ladies who cooked when I was there were still alive and came back to cook a meal for me. It was incredible.
Did your parents get to see your success?
Yeah, they're still around. My dad reads everything. If someone says something derogatory or adversarial towards me, he gets mad. So I tell him, "Don't read everything, you're going to be mad all the time."
Don't read the bad press.
Yeah.
What do you miss about life before all this insanity? You're a car guy, but you don't even get to drive anymore.
You were the first and only person I've known who owned a Koenigsegg. Christian is an amazing architect. When you turn it on, it sounds exactly like a Batmobile. It's like a seven-step process to turn it on because it's that powerful. I don't drive anymore, and I miss that a little bit. I still look at the new Ferraris; I think they're pretty terrific feats of engineering.
*[Sponsor break for Maverick Silicon]* If we're sitting here five years from now, what does the world look like? What's going to surprise us the most?
There's no question that the computer will completely transform from something that we program to something that programs itself with guidance from us. In the past, we would teach a computer Japanese; in the future, we would tell the computer to go learn Japanese. The computer will be able to deal with problem sizes that are a billion times larger than anything we're working on today.
We can't even comprehend what that means because formulating a problem is often limited by our own imagination. The complexities of digital biology, physical sciences, or quantum physics—that's going to be easy. Even mundane things like traffic jams or smart grids will be solved by AI to minimize waste. Every hard problem today will be turbocharged. When the tool is way faster, the problem looks way smaller.
Because of jet planes, we made the world a smaller place. It's the same thing with the computers Nvidia makes. Because what we make is so much faster, we made every problem smaller. One day, researchers at OpenAI said, "Hey, why don't we just take all of the internet data and just give it to this computer?" because all of a sudden, that data looked tiny because the computers had become so fast. That attitude will pervade almost every field of science. In five years' time, that's going to be the state of mind: those hard problems now just look really simple.
As a result, we're going to solve more problems. Companies will be incredibly productive. Managing our supply chain will be way easier. Designing our computers will be easier, so we can try more iterations before release. Every company will be more profitable. If every problem we dream up looks more tenable, then we're going to come up with more problems to solve. Instead of having fewer jobs, I feel we're going to be busier than ever because we're going to think of ideas we can solve now that we didn't used to be able to.
All of the experiments that were too expensive to try are now on the table. One thought experiment: today I'm surrounded by 60 geniuses, and in their fields, they're artificial super intelligent relative to me. Yet I've got no trouble working with all of them. The AIs I use now—OpenAI, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity, Anthropic—are in their way already smarter than I am, and yet I've got no trouble working with them every day.
When I formulate problems for my team, I often have the benefit of waiting two or three days for an answer. That allows me to then think about the next step. What if those answers come back in a second? I would be insanely busy because I'm now the critical path of everything. Information technology is so fast now that it puts us in the critical path. Therefore, we're busier than ever.
Lastly, for people that didn't benefit from the technology industry, AI closed that technology divide. One of my favorite things is "vibe coding." Anybody could be a software programmer now, creating software that is better than a lot of programmers. I love the work that Cursor and Lovable do. AI is going to help everyone who is gifted at their craft but doesn't know how to scale with technology. People are creating small businesses from software written by Lovable and making $2-3 million a year. They're welcomed into the world's economy, not burdened by technology anymore.
Five years from now, it's likely we're all going to be more gainfully employed and the economy more productive. GDP will grow and inflation will go down. Of course, there's the "doomer" view that half of the world's jobs will be lost. I think it's more likely that 100% of the world's jobs will change than 50% of jobs being lost. It's very likely that people who don't have jobs today can make a living because of AI.
In 5 years, the computer is still a computer. Applications are just smarter. Maybe we don't go to websites anymore because our agents do the shopping, but they're still buying from Amazon. One wish list item: I hope the work we're doing with human robotics turns into something where we all have our own version of R2-D2 or C-3PO. I hope Disney decides to merchandise the robots I have on stage during GTC because they're adorable. My pets need pets, right? There are a lot of lonely people who would benefit from interacting with these robots at home.
Will you enjoy it as much when the robots are cooking for you?
The answer is yes. I have all the resources today to not cook, and yet I choose to. Lori and I are just by ourselves—she made chili last night by herself. Our favorite moment is when the kids come over and we're all cooking and enjoying a cocktail. That's as good as it gets.
How do you want to be remembered?
It's nice to be remembered. I'm fortunate that because of what Nvidia has done, it will likely be important to the world long beyond me. I was fortunate to have been a founder with Chris and Curtis and to have built something genuinely consequential to the world. Not many people get to say that.
I'm proud of the impact on so many industries and the employees that have been here for 33 years. We're growing an employee base around the world—in Israel, China, Taiwan, India, Europe, Canada. One of these days I hope Nvidia extends into the Global South. How do people remember me? They'll probably remember me as a founder and builder of Nvidia—and a good guy with a great sense of humor.
In a lot of ways, I'm still a reluctant CEO. I like being inside the company more than outside. I like not giving speeches or keynotes, yet I have to do it. I'm a highly reluctant CEO but a very enthusiastic Nvidia builder.
I think it's always fun when the good guys win. I've loved watching the ups and downs.
Just a reminder to all the CEOs: nobody does it alone. We are the CEO, but if not for the generosity of others... really, your generosity in the early days and that Morris Chang award meant a lot to me.
CEOs need help. I have no idea how many times I've started conversations with, "I need your help." People have been generous to share knowledge and help me get things done. That's the real life lesson: it's surprisingly vulnerable.
A lonely position, too?
It's lonely in our head because you're trying to solve tricky problems and you're talking to yourself for thousands of hours. But we also have to recognize that everybody wants us to succeed. CEOs are more vulnerable than they allow themselves to feel, but I've got no trouble feeling vulnerable.
*[Sponsor break for Morgan Stanley]* We're going to end on some rapid-fire questions I call "The Last Tape Out."
Don't tell me when my last tape out is! See, now I'm holding myself because this is the part I don't like.
Who's the smartest person you've ever met?
I can't answer that. The definition of smart is usually someone intelligent who solves technical problems, but I find that's a commodity. Long-term, my personal definition of smart is someone who sits at the intersection of technical astuteness and human empathy—having the ability to infer the unspoken and see around corners. Being able to preempt problems just because you feel the "vibe" that came from a combination of data, wisdom, and sensing people. That person might score horribly on the SAT.
What's a misconception people have about you?
Give me an example.
That you love to be in the public eye and you're a great speaker, so you love to give speeches.
That is exactly the opposite of the truth. Public speaking scares the living daylights out of me. Right now I am in deep anxiety over GTC. I've been anxious for a month. These things wear on me.
Company meetings scare me to death because they're the most important people in the world to me. It's impossible to prepare for because everything I can tell them is already on a video somewhere. It has to be genuine, unique, and fresh. I have no idea how it's going to turn out. People think earnings week is stressful; it's not even a little bit. The company meeting stresses me out.
So the conception is exactly wrong.
Right.
Favorite vacation spot?
Wherever my family is and wherever we're cooking. If I had to name places, I'm always happy landing in Hawaii, Taiwan, and Japan. I have very long memories of Japan and how important it was to saving our company.
Pet peeve?
People who don't listen to or answer my question during important times. When we need facts to get to the truth fast and someone doesn't answer, it triggers me instantaneously. I never understand why the person underappreciates the context. If somebody wants to trigger me, that's the way to do it.
One last question: if you had to be 20 years old again, would you do it today or relive our day?
I would relive it in our day because I thought our 20s were happier. Everyone deserves some time to be oblivious and not wear all the world's problems on day one. There's some joy and a superpower in ignorance. Nvidia would not be possible today if I hadn't been ignorant to the fact that it was impossible to build.
Optimistic people are so oblivious to the truth that they are optimistic. We're raising a generation of very cynical, too-informed people. We had the opportunity to build up an internal reserve of optimism way more than people do today. When we're optimistic, we're superhuman.
Ignorance is bliss.
It's a superpower. Anybody who tackles a new adventure—if not for ignorance, they would think it's too hard. I approached everything with "How hard can it be?" Now it turns out it's really hard, you have no idea. If you would have known everything—all the feelings, setbacks, and disappointments—you would never do it.
The other superpower is having no endgame. Nvidia has no endgame. People ask me for the plan; staying in business is the plan. We have dreams, but staying in business is 100% the plan. People ask for life goals; I don't have any. Just working, staying employed, and being surrounded by amazing people. Having no endgame has been really helpful.
I love it. Thanks for being my first guest. This was super fun.
Thank you. This was terrific. Great to see you. Great to hang out with you.
Yeah, you too.