Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Works 7 Days a Week in ‘State of Anxiety’

Nvidia may be the most valuable company in the world, with a market capitalization of $4.4 trillion at the time of writing, but that hasn’t stopped CEO Jensen Huang from working seven days a week. The co-founder and CEO recently disclosed that he still and lives in a constant “state of anxiety” driven by fear of the company going bankrupt.

In an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, which aired earlier this week, Huang said he has described Nvidia as being “30 days from going out of business” for over three decades and that his feeling of insecurity “doesn’t leave.”

“To live on fumes at all times,” Huang said. “The feeling, no different from the feeling I had this morning when I woke up: ‘You’re going to be out of business soon.’”

Huang said the feeling “doesn’t change” even though Nvidia currently tops the charts in market value and reported record revenue of $57 billion for its third quarter last month. “The sense of vulnerability, the sense of uncertainty, the sense of insecurity — it doesn’t leave you,” he said.

Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993, immediately stepping into the role of CEO, a position he has now held for 32 years. The company started as a graphics card manufacturer, but has recently pivoted to creating AI chips that power the efforts of other tech giants, like Microsoft, OpenAI and Meta. In October, Nvidia briefly became the first company in history to achieve a $5 trillion market capitalization.

Huang doesn’t take Nvidia’s success as an indicator that it is time to rest on his laurels — quite the opposite. The 62-year-old CEO said on the podcast that he works seven days a week, “every moment” he is awake, including holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. He wakes up early in the morning, at 4 a.m., to read emails for a few hours and says he reads several thousand emails a day.

“It’s exhausting,” Huang said on the podcast. “Always in a state of anxiety.”

Huang mentioned that his two children, Spencer and Madison, both work for Nvidia and also work seven days a week. He did not say whether he expects his employees to have this kind of work ethic.

Not all CEOs subscribe to an always-on work mindset. Karri Saarinen, the 38-year-old CEO of project management startup Linear, built a $1.25 billion startup by prioritizing workplace wellness. Linear asks its 100 employees to work the standard 40 hours, and offers generous perks, including permanently remote work, five weeks of paid time off per year and four months of paid parental leave. Saarinen starts his day at 8 a.m. and ends by 4 p.m.

“If your life is a little more balanced, you’ll feel happier, more fulfilled — and it shows in your work,” Saarinen told Entrepreneur in an interview. “In our company, we always try to err on the side of quality, not quantity.”

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Nvidia may be the most valuable company in the world, with a market capitalization of $4.4 trillion at the time of writing, but that hasn’t stopped CEO Jensen Huang from working seven days a week. The co-founder and CEO recently disclosed that he still and lives in a constant “state of anxiety” driven by fear of the company going bankrupt.

In an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, which aired earlier this week, Huang said he has described Nvidia as being “30 days from going out of business” for over three decades and that his feeling of insecurity “doesn’t leave.”