Ever since the generative AI boom started and tech corporations started hopping on the bandwagon, NVIDIA has been on a roll due to a surge in demand for next-gen GPUs to facilitate sophisticated AI advances.
In 2023, NVIDIA was named the most profitable semiconductor chip brand in the world, with Microsoft and Facebook's Meta among its A-list clients. The high demand for GPUs heavily contributed to the chipmaker briefly becoming the world's most valuable company with $3 trillion in market capitalization.
More recently, the chipmaker soared even greater heights by becoming the first $4 trillion company ahead of Microsoft and Apple. However, Microsoft is also well on its way to unlocking this impressive feat despite recent layoffs that saw approximately 15,300 people lose their jobs.
Since NVIDIA finally hit the $4 trillion market capitalization threshold with approximately 36,000 employees, each employee now apparently accounts for over $111 million in market value (via artificial intelligenceee on IG). For context, NVIDIA's workforce is roughly the population size of a small town like Westerville, Ohio, or Haverhill, Massachusetts.
Last year, a damning report revealed that employees at NVIDIA work like hell around the clock, with the workplace environment being compared to a pressure cooker. It also detailed that, unlike most organizations defaulting to work-from-home and hybrid work during and post the COVID-19 pandemic, NVIDIA employees go to the office every day of the week and often work into the later hours of the night, sometimes past 2 AM.
A former employee of the company working in its marketing division revealed that they'd attend up to 10 meetings per day with over 30 participants, which would often turn into verbal shooting matches due to differences in opinion and strategy.
But the chipmaker reportedly uses "golden handcuffs" to retain its employees, often in the form of generous compensation packages. Another former employee revealed that people working in the company for more than a decade should have enough money set aside for retirement, but most opt to continue working for better incentives. The parking lot at NVIDIA's headquarters is reportedly filled with high-end cars, including Porsches, Corvettes, and Lamborghinis, which could be an indicator of how good the compensation is at the company.
