You think you have imposter syndrome: Nvidia CEO is worried his trillion dollar company might go bust overnight
pcgamer.comAt this year's New York Times Dealbook Summit, essentially a series of interviews with mega-wealthy CEOs, Jen-Hsun Huang of Nvidia was asked about why he constantly feels that his company may one day bite the dust. «I don't think people are trying to put me out of business—I probably know they're trying to,» he said. «I live in this condition where we're partly desperate, partly aspirational.»
With a current market cap of $1.155 trillion, more than double what it was three years ago and the 6th largest in the world, Nvidia is exceedingly unlikely to ever actually go bust overnight. Huang co-founded the graphics giant in 1993, with Chris Malachowsky (currently Nvidia's Senior VP of Engineering and Ops) and Curtis Priem (now retired), and has led the company since that time.
Things were pretty shaky in the early years but given that it now dominates the GPU and AI industries, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Jen-Hsun's remarks are nothing more than a spot of marketing hyperbole.
«I like to live in that state where we're about to perish, and so I enjoy that condition,» he explains, going on to say that he felt that he always does his best work in those circumstances.
Top-flight CEOs constantly battling with a fear of failure is common, so the polite laughs from the summit's live audience weren't from a sense of disbelief of Huang but rather a recognition that if you're not wary and take your foot of the accelerator, then there will always be another competitor ready to jump in and take that top spot. Nvidia isn't alone in the GPU/AI world: AMD and Intel are ever-present, of course, as are the rising number of chip firms in China.
In the same interview, Huang was asked for his thoughts on chip independence, i.e. having
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