00:00 Speaker A
The architect of artificial intelligence has been named Time’s 2024-25 Person of the Year. Time magazine’s feature begins with a man who is arguably at the center of the artificial intelligence craze. That, of course, is Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang. Luckily for me, I had someone who knew Jensen extensively because of a book that had just won the Financial Times Business Book of the Year. Stephen Witt is the author of Thinking Machines, Jensen Wong, Nvidia, and the world’s most coveted Microship. Well, Stephen, great to see you here. Congrats on that win.
00:43 Speaker A
I know you put your heart and soul into this book and it’s great to see the “W” written on the chalkboard.
00:48 Speaker A
So we talk to Jensen a lot here uh Yahoo Finance, but usually he’s on because of his income or attending events. You really have to spend a lot of personal time up close and personal with him.
01:02 Speaker A
What does he like? I think a lot of people would be surprised to hear that, I mean, he had a quick trigger when it came to his temper.
01:10 Speaker B
Yes, absolutely. You know, one of his executives told me that interacting with Jensen was like sticking your finger into an electrical outlet. I found that to be true. Jensen is very, very intense. Well, he’s hurt pretty tight. Well, he really wanted to succeed. He’s also almost entirely neurotic. Like I mean, he’s driven by negative emotions like fear of failure, guilt, even shame, or what makes Jen get up in the morning and work hard to make Nvidia successful.
01:43 Speaker B
So he’s really a unique CEO. I think the other thing that’s not as obvious or obvious if you just look at it from the outside is how smart this guy is. He is a world-class computer scientist. He is a world-class engineer. If necessary, he could design these microchips himself. This is a very rare quality for a CEO.
02:01 Speaker A
I got a lot of takeaways from your book, but I think there were two that really stood out to me or worried me. There are a lot of people on Yahoo Finance who like Nvidia. I mean, they own the stock, they’ve owned the stock for many years. First, you don’t realize a succession plan is in place.
02:18 Speaker B
There isn’t any. Not at all. Well, there’s just Jensen up there, and there’s 60 people down there, right? There is no second in command and no obvious successor. Uh, the board won’t tell me anything about that. Jensen said he gave no advice. He had no suggestions for succession planning. So it’s really a one-man show. When you consider that this equates to about 8% of the S&P 500 (which by some measures is the most valuable company of all time), you see that it’s really just resting
02:51 Speaker B
In some ways influenced the man’s vision. Now, the people at Jensen are great. The people around him could serve as CEOs of other companies themselves if need be. Um, but it’s true that he’s at the top, there’s no second level, and then basically there’s the third level with 60 or 70 people reporting directly to Jensen.
03:13 Speaker A
I don’t know I don’t know any other way to express it. I mean, you mentioned it’s a big part of the SP 500. This company laid the foundation for this country’s next 100 years. I mean, they’re the center of all this stuff. But you also mentioned that he has two children who work at the company. Are they like Jason? Did you talk to them?
03:30 Speaker B
They are not. Well, neither of Jensen’s children actually have a technical background. His son ran a cocktail bar for many years, and his daughter works in marketing at LVMH, a fashion retailer. Well, so they’re not part of the succession plan. They can’t design microchips, and whoever you put in charge at Nvidia has to be an expert at it. Well, I mean, he loves his kids and he has a very close relationship with them, uh, but I don’t think their personalities are the same as his.
04:02 Speaker B
They made thoughtful decisions at a young age not to sacrifice their health and sanity for the sake of our company’s stock price. I think this is probably the right decision for most people.
04:12 Speaker A
You also talk a lot about, you know, negative thoughts about Jensen, which I think will also surprise a lot of people because we see little bits and pieces of him, a very classy, smiling guy, eating food on different tours, signing people’s jackets, and in one instance, signing their bras. I mean, it’s not like that’s someone we’ve met.
04:36 Speaker B
He’s great on stage, but it’s just a character. This is a personality he has developed over the years. In fact, he was very uncomfortable on stage. I was in the green room with him when he was giving a presentation to a group of about 40 architects and, uh, he was very nervous about going on stage. I couldn’t believe it. He rocked back and forth like he was joking. He didn’t want to be there, and he turned to me and said, you know, I hate public speaking.
05:04 Speaker B
I can’t believe it, but it’s true. He didn’t really like being there. He’s so good at it. you will never know. That’s the thing about Jason. He is the ultimate performer. He is the ultimate engineer, able to adapt to the needs of any situation. That’s why he’s so good as a CEO. He’s very, very adaptable. So even things like public speaking, which he seems to be completely natural at, are almost completely choreographed. It wasn’t easy for him.
05:32 Speaker A
And given your research on Jensen, Nvidia, the company, the culture, you even talked about the employees there, 50% of the people are worth $25 million. I mean, that’s just crazy stuff. In 10 years, will Nvidia still be the dominant player in the industry?
05:47 Speaker B
There are huge risks. Well, the biggest risk right now is obviously Google. They just trained Gemini uh on some of their world-class AI, uh the best AI in benchmarks right now outside of the Nvidia stack. They use their own internally generated tensor processing units, or TPUs. This is a huge risk. If Google ends up winning this AI venture, then Nvidia will uh be in the AI race, that’s uh Nvidia will be in trouble. Uh there are other risks. There’s Broadcom, there’s AMD, China is trying to build its own
06:17 Speaker B
A complete replacement for the stack. Well, it’s easy to imagine Nvidia’s stock price falling significantly from here. I think it’s also possible to imagine a world where it rises. Well, I think Jensen is putting a lot of resources and effort into training robots right now. If the robot wave comes, if it can dominate, it will mean that the market value of this company will reach trillions of dollars.
06:45 Speaker A
Come on, Stephen, uh, will Jensen still respond to your uh messages, texts, emails, calls? I’m always fascinated when someone writes a book like this.
06:53 Speaker B
You know, I think there were aspects of the book that he didn’t necessarily like. I, you know, this is not an authorized biography, even though I was given all this access. I did get a little harsh on him sometimes. Well, but he’s the most capable person I’ve ever met. He’s even completely different from other tech CEOs I’ve met. Ultimately, I think this is a good portrait of Jensen. It shows the honest Jensen and shows why he is successful. So, yes, we are still communicating.
07:22 Speaker B
I’m actually writing a story for The New Yorker right now about the coming wave of consumer humanoid robots for the home, a market that Nvidia is looking to dominate. Uh, so I’m talking to them about this right now.
