Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Says He Would Never Start the Company Again

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who has led the world’s most valuable company since founding it in 1993, made a candid admission this week: if he could go back, he would never start Nvidia again.

Speaking on Guy Raz’s How I Built This podcast, Huang said that the decades of suffering, embarrassment, and relentless pressure behind building Nvidia into a $5.3 trillion company were simply not worth it. “The answer, absolutely not,” Huang said, when asked whether he would do it all over again knowing what he now knows.

The Hidden Cost of Building an Empire

Huang argued that founders and observers alike tend to fixate on outcomes while ignoring the brutal psychological toll of the journey. During the 2008 financial crisis, Nvidia’s stock plummeted roughly 85% from its late-2007 peak. Even in the mid-2010s, the company faced intense skepticism while quietly pouring money into CUDA — a software platform that few believed in at the time, but which eventually became a foundational pillar of modern AI infrastructure.

Survival Through Selective Forgetting

What kept Huang going through those dark stretches was a deliberate mental strategy: refusing to dwell on the past. “I spent all my time forgetting yesterday,” he said. He trained himself to look only forward, treating each failure as something to move beyond rather than linger on.

Despite his honest reflection, Huang acknowledged pride in what Nvidia has achieved and the impact it has had across industries. The regret, he clarified, wasn’t about the destination — it was about the price of the ticket to get there.