Jensen Huang reviews salary of every Nvidia employee himself and now 80% are millionaires. What is his strategy?

Time of India

3 days ago

Salary reviews at a billion-dollar pace
From salary checks to millionaire makers
The billionaire effect at the top
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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang calls AI the 'greatest equalizer of our time', predicts it will create more millionaires than the internet
In the cutthroat world of tech, most CEOs delegate salary reviews to HR. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang does the opposite — he personally reviews the compensation of all 42,000 employees every single month. This hands-on habit, coupled with the AI boom, has helped turn not just executives but thousands of staff members into millionaires.The revelation came during an AI-focused discussion on the All-In podcast, where Huang explained that this unusual leadership approach is a cornerstone of Nvidia's success. His message was simple: 'If you take care of people, everything else takes care of itself.'Huang says he manages the task with the help of machine learning tools that sort through recommended compensation data for every employee. 'I go through the whole company… 100% of the time I increase the company's spend on opex,' he said in the podcast.While some have speculated that he keeps a hidden reserve of stock options to reward high performers, Huang neither confirmed nor denied it. What he did stress was his belief in competitive pay as a means to keep talent motivated and loyal. 'Don't feel sad for anybody at my layer,' he quipped, noting that he has 'created more billionaires on my management team than any CEO in the world.'The results of Huang's philosophy are staggering. According to a Benzinga report citing internal surveys and market data, around 80% of Nvidia employees are now millionaires. Nearly half of them are reportedly worth more than $25 million.The wealth surge has been driven largely by Nvidia's employee stock purchase program, which lets staff buy shares at a 15% discount. With Nvidia's market value soaring — now topping $4.39 trillion — those shares have turned into life-changing assets. The stock has climbed over 79% in the past year alone, cementing the company as the most valuable publicly traded firm in the world.It is not just the rank-and-file who have benefited. A recent spike in Nvidia's stock price pushed three of its board members into the billionaire club. Huang himself now has a net worth exceeding $157 billion, putting him among the top ten wealthiest individuals globally.Still, Huang insists his focus is not on personal fortune but on fairly rewarding everyone, from engineers to senior executives. His leadership model has made Nvidia a case study in how aligning employee prosperity with company growth can fuel unprecedented success.Huang's belief in the power of talent extends beyond paychecks. On the All-In podcast, he argued that small, well-funded teams can produce major breakthroughs in AI. Citing examples like OpenAI and China's DeepSeek, both with around 150 employees, he said such teams can 'create wonders' if given the right resources.