Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang once admitted that he no longer separates life from work, stating that he thinks about the chipmaker, even during movies.
What Happened: "I work from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep," Huang said to Stripe CEO Patrick Collison in an interview last year.
"I work seven days a week," Huang adds in a clip that’s resurfaced on social media and gone viral.
"When I'm not working, I'm thinking about working… I sit through movies, but I don't remember them because I'm thinking about work."
The 62‑year‑old billionaire described those reveries as productive, noting, "Sometimes you're imagining the future and boy, if we did this and that. And it's working. You're fantasizing, you're dreaming.” His ambition, he added, is to "turn Nvidia into one giant AI," believing that might finally deliver downtime.
"How great would that be? And then I'll have work‑life balance," he quipped.
Huang's intensity has steered Nvidia from graphics‑card upstart to the world's most valuable public company, topping a $4 trillion valuation on July 9 and currently at $4.08 trillion.
“The thing is, when you want to build something great it's not easy to do. And when you're doing something that's not easy to do, you're not always enjoying it,” Huang explains.
Why It Matters: Former workers say that culture means emails at 1 am and seven‑day workweeks, conditions some endure for stock grants. Bloomberg said engineers stay until 2 am to meet deadlines.
Huang's marathon schedule echoes the grind embraced by Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk, who said this month he is "back to working seven days a week and sleeping in the office." In May, Musk likewise told followers he was "spending 24/7 at work, sleeping in conference, server or factory rooms" to keep projects on track.
Both men's philosophies mirror earlier accounts in which Musk urged founders to "work like hell" because "nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week," a mantra Huang appears to embody.
Photo: jamesonwu1972 on Shutterstock.com
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