Nvidia’s co-founder and chief executive, Jensen Huang, says he personally goes through the salaries of every single one of the company’s 42,000 employees — a practice he calls central to his hands-on leadership style.
Speaking on a recent episode of the All In Podcast, hosted by venture capitalists Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and David Friedberg, Huang revealed that he even uses machine learning tools to speed up the process. Sacks, one of the hosts, has recently taken up the role of AI and cryptocurrency czar under the Trump administration.
“I review everybody’s compensation, up to this day, at the end of every cycle. They send me everybody’s recommended comp. I go through the whole company. I sort through all 42,000 employees, and 100% of the time I increase the company’s spend on opex (operating expenses),” Huang explained.
He added, “And the reason for that is because you take care of people; everything else takes care of itself.”
Huang also pointed out that the policy has paid off for his upper management. “I’ve created more billionaires on my management team than any CEO in the world. They’re doing just fine. Don’t feel sad for anybody at my layer,” he said.
A recent survey, highlighted by financial analyst Jesse Cohen, shows just how lucrative working at Nvidia can be. The poll — based on responses from 3,000 employees — suggests that 76–78% of them are now millionaires, largely due to the company’s employee stock purchase plan, which gives staff a 15% discount on shares. Roughly half of respondents reportedly have a net worth above $25 million.
“Wild Stat of the Day: 76-78% of Nvidia employees are now millionaires, with approximately 50% having a net worth over $25 million,” Cohen posted on X, sharing what appeared to be a screenshot of the survey results.
Nvidia’s meteoric rise has been fuelled by the explosion of generative AI. Since 2019, its stock has surged nearly 3,800%. On July 9, 2025, it became the first publicly traded company to cross the $4 trillion market capitalisation mark, overtaking Apple and Microsoft.
That surge in valuation has also pushed Huang into the ranks of the world’s top 10 wealthiest individuals.
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The company’s early success was rooted in making GPUs for gaming and graphics-heavy applications, which eventually led to a key deal to supply hardware for Microsoft’s Xbox console. More recently, Nvidia’s dominance in AI hardware—particularly GPUs powering massive large language models like OpenAI’s GPT-5—has cemented its position as the leading force in the AI chip race.