Jensen Huang says he would not build Nvidia again today

Wednesday 20 May 2026 - 07:58

By: Dakir Madiha

Jensen Huang says he would not build Nvidia again today

Jensen Huang, cofounder and chief executive of Nvidia, said he would not launch the company again if given the chance, describing the emotional and personal cost of building what has become the world’s most valuable publicly traded company. The remarks were made during a recent episode of the podcast How I Built This hosted by Guy Raz.

Asked whether he would repeat the experience of creating Nvidia knowing the full difficulty involved, Huang answered immediately that he would not. He argued that many successful founders who claim they would start over again are “dishonest” because they confuse the final outcome with the painful process required to reach it. Huang said the reality of building Nvidia included years of humiliation, layoffs, financial crises, and constant uncertainty, experiences he actively tries to forget in order to keep moving forward.

The comments are consistent with previous statements Huang has made about entrepreneurship. During a public appearance in 2023, he said that “nobody in their right mind” would knowingly choose to start a company because of the level of hardship involved. In a separate interview in late 2025, he described his role leading Nvidia as “a lifetime of sacrifice,” reflecting the personal strain behind the company’s rise from a struggling startup into the dominant supplier of artificial intelligence computing infrastructure.

The podcast episode revisited Nvidia’s 33 year history, beginning with its founding in 1993 and several near collapse moments during its early years. Huang explained that one of the company’s first graphics chips relied on unsuitable technology and failed to align with Microsoft DirectX standards, forcing Nvidia into a risky redesign while cash reserves were rapidly shrinking. By 1997, the company had only months of funding left and spent half of its remaining money on a used chip emulator in an effort to validate a design in a single attempt rather than endure the industry’s typical two year development cycle.

Huang also reflected on Nvidia’s long term investment in CUDA, the parallel computing platform integrated into gaming graphics processors years before large scale commercial artificial intelligence applications existed. At the time, the strategy was widely questioned across the industry. The decision later became central to Nvidia’s dominance in AI computing, as CUDA evolved into a foundational software ecosystem for training and deploying advanced machine learning systems.

The interview comes as Nvidia reaches unprecedented financial heights. The company’s market value surpassed $5.5 trillion in mid May 2026, placing it ahead of major technology rivals including Apple and Alphabet. Nvidia’s rapid expansion has been fueled by surging global demand for AI chips used in data centers, cloud computing platforms, and generative artificial intelligence systems.

Huang’s remarks offered a rare contrast between the public image of entrepreneurial success and the reality experienced by many founders behind major technology companies. His message centered less on Nvidia’s financial success and more on the psychological cost, uncertainty, and repeated setbacks that shaped the company’s rise over three decades.