Premium

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says he works 7 days a week, including holidays: ‘Always in a state of anxiety’

Jensen Huang explained that he has always operated under the belief that Nvidia is on the verge of collapse.

4 min readNew DelhiDec 7, 2025 11:34 AM IST

Jensen Huang said he works every single day and checks his emails early each morning (Reuters)

Nvidia chief executive and co-founder Jensen Huang recently opened up about his work schedule, saying he still works with the same pressure and uncertainty he felt in the company’s early days, even now that Nvidia has become the world’s most valuable listed company. Speaking on The Joe Rogan Experience, he said the company’s massive scale has not changed his mindset.

Huang explained that he has always operated with the idea that Nvidia is close to collapse. “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 works every single day and checks his emails early each morning. “Every day. Every single day. Not one day missed. Including Thanksgiving, Christmas,” he said. He admitted the routine is “exhausting” and said he is “always in a state of anxiety.”

Nvidia began as a graphics chip company and later expanded into hardware and software for artificial intelligence systems. The company reached a market valuation of $5 trillion last month. But despite the success, Huang said he still worries about failure. “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 setback in the mid-1990s, when Nvidia discovered flaws in its first graphics technology while developing a chip for Sega’s next gaming console. With only limited funds left, Huang shared that he flew to Japan to tell Sega’s chief executive that the product would not work and that the project needed to be cancelled.

At the same time, he told Sega that Nvidia needed the remaining $5 million from the contract to survive. Sega later converted the amount into an investment, giving Nvidia the money it needed to continue.

Huang said these tough moments 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 previously told Stanford students that he hoped they would also experience “ample doses of pain and suffering,” which he believes helps build resilience and realistic expectations.

Story continues below this ad

Also Read | Indian techie quits high-paying job in Germany to sell dosas, opens restaurants in Paris, London: ‘Sharing India’s healthy gut food with the world’

Further, he spoke about his children, Madison and Spencer, both now in their thirties, who 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 explored other paths after school; Madison studied at the Culinary Institute of America, while Spencer studied marketing in Chicago, moved to Taiwan to learn Mandarin, and even 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.