However, leading his company to greatness has meant that work-life balance has had to take a major backseat; in fact, for Huang, every waking moment is dedicated to work.
“I work from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep. I work seven days a week,” Huang said in an interview with Stripe’s CEO Patrick Collison last year, that’s currently going viral once again.
“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.”
While it may sound hardcore, Huang’s leadership has helped Nvidia’s stock become one of the hottest commodities—with the share price skyrocketing 1,600% in the last five years. But not all his hours on the clock are answering emails or sitting through meetings; the 62-year-old often spends his time as a leader envisioning the future.
“Sometimes you’re imagining the future. And, boy, if we did this and that. It’s working, you’re fantasizing, you’re dreaming,” he said.
One of his biggest dreams is that every part of his company will use AI aggressively—which will not only help scale the business to even greater heights but also give him and his workers some added flexibility.
“I want to turn NVIDIA into a one giant AI,” Jensen said to Collison.
“How great would that be? And then I’ll have work-life balance.”
Nvidia employees hardcore grind to the top
Working beyond the 9-to-5 is a norm that more than just Huang endures.
According to accounts from multiple former employees, there were expectations to be on the work grind seven days a week—with work piling up until one or two in the morning, Bloomberg reports. Other workers, especially in the engineering department, had even longer work hours. And in meetings, the pressure would often get so high that shouting matches would reportedly occur, according to Bloomberg.
However, with high pay packages at the growing company, the anonymous workers said they felt it difficult to leave.
Huang himself has admitted that he’s not the easiest boss to have. In a 60 Minutes interview last year, he said that working at Nvidia shouldn’t come with the expectation of ease.
“If you want to do extraordinary things, it shouldn’t be easy,” he said.
Nvidia declined Fortune’s request for comment.
Work-life balance goes out the window on the path to success
Having to forgo work-life balance in exchange for scaling a business is not something that’s exclusive to the tech industry—leaders of all industries have admitted that working as much as possible will translate to results.
Lior Lewensztain, founder and CEO of fruit bar and snack company, That’s It Nutrition, previously told Fortune that work-life balance remains an elusive perk—even after building a multi-million-dollar business.
“Even if I am on vacation, you’re on 24 hours a day. You never can really leave,” said Lewensztain.
And it’s something even world leaders like former President Barack Obama have echoed: “If you want to be excellent at anything—sports, music, business, politics—there’s going to be times of your life when you’re out of balance, where you’re just working and you’re single-minded,” he said on The Pivot Podcast.
When searching for a career, billionaire cofounder of Scale AI Lucy Gao, encourages Gen Z to pick one that doesn’t make you crave time off.
“I would say that if you feel the need for work-life balance, maybe you’re not in the right work,” she told Fortune.
