Jensen Huang Rarely Talks About Life and Death: Hopes to Pass Away Suddenly While Working, Reiterates Distrust in the "Successor Plan"

Ask AI: How Does Jensen Huang’s Work Philosophy Shape His View of Life?

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang Rarely Talks About Life and Death

Recently, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, during an appearance on a technology blog program, in a rare 150-minute in-depth interview, spoke candidly about his views on death, saying he hopes he can suddenly die at work in the future.

When the host asked, “Have you thought about the limits of life? Are you afraid of death?” Huang admitted that he “really doesn’t want to die”; but since he can’t live forever, “I hope to die in my position, and I hope it’s instant—without long-lasting pain.”

He said he loves both life and work: “My life is wonderful. I have a great family and very important work.” Huang believes NVIDIA is “one of the most important technology companies in human history,” saying, “We’re doing very important work, and I take it extremely seriously.”

In the interview, he again said he doesn’t trust the traditional “succession plan,” saying, “I always say I don’t believe in succession plans. A lot of people already know that.”

“If you’re worried about a succession plan, and you’re anxious about it, what should you do? The most important thing is to keep transmitting, as continuously as possible, knowledge, information, insights, skills, and experience.” Huang explained: “Every moment that I spend inside and outside the company, I’m doing everything I can to pass on knowledge to people—to empower them and improve everyone around me.”

As Huang revealed, he has as many as 60 direct reports, and almost all of them have engineering backgrounds, including experts in areas such as memory, CPU, optics, GPU, architecture, algorithms, design, and more. In day-to-day work, he abandons a one-on-one reporting model; instead, he gathers experts from all relevant fields together to tackle problems jointly. “We’ll raise a question, and everyone will work together to solve it. That’s why I keep reasoning everything in front of the team—every meeting is a reasoning meeting.” Huang said, “What I learn never stays on my desk for more than a second. Before I’ve finished learning it myself, I’ve already pointed it to others to research it.”

In his view, this unreserved, real-time sharing of thinking processes is far more valuable than a static “succession list,” and it can ensure the company isn’t affected if an individual leaves.

In the interview, Huang for the first time provided a detailed recap of the most dangerous moment in the company’s history—when, to promote the CUDA architecture, NVIDIA forced massive costs onto the GeForce product line, causing the company’s market value to plunge from roughly $6–$7 billion to $1.5 billion. “That gamble put the company’s fate on the line,” Huang recalled. “But the key to a computing platform is installed base; developers will flock to platforms with a large installed base.”

When asked whether NVIDIA could become a company with $3 trillion in annual revenue, he gave an affirmative answer, citing the reason: computing is shifting from “retrieval-based” to “generative,” and computers are shifting from “warehouses” to “factories.” “A warehouse doesn’t make much money; a factory creates revenue directly.” In his view, intelligence has been commoditized, and the AI factories NVIDIA is building are continuously producing the most valuable “tokens” for today’s society.

When discussing AGI (artificial general intelligence) timelines, Huang believes AGI has already been achieved. If AGI is defined as an AI system that can autonomously innovate and manage and profit like a technology company, he says today’s OpenClaw can generate interesting small applications—allowing billions of people to spend a little money to use them. Similar one-off, short-lived websites have existed in the internet era, and he believes today’s AI is enough to build companies like these.

As the leader of the world’s most valuable company, how should he deal with the immense pressure from economies around the world built around its strategic deployments? Huang’s approach is: break it down, share it, and forget it. “I break it down—reason about the situation, the changes, and the difficulties—then formulate a plan.” As he disclosed, when pressure comes, he breaks the problem into manageable items and quickly shares it with the team. “No matter what worries me, I tell others as soon as possible—don’t keep it bottled up in your heart.” And the most critical step is “systematic forgetting”—like a top athlete, focusing only on the “next scoring opportunity.”