Nvidia CEO Says He Uses a Simple Philosophy to Decide How Much He Pays Workers

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has emerged as one of the biggest winners of the AI boom. As Nvidia’s chief executive, his personal fortune has risen to around $186 billion, making him the eighth-richest person in the world. The AI surge has even turned several of his board members into billionaires. 

Huang has a simple philosophy behind how much he pays workers: He believes in compensating them “as much as possible” and says he pays his staff accordingly. 

“I pay my employees as much as I can,” Huang told reporters earlier this week on the sidelines of the Computex trade show in Taipei, per Bloomberg. “That’s what I do.”

Huang was answering a question about Nvidia partner Samsung Electronics and its newly ratified compensation deal, which will grant chip engineers bonuses that can reach $400,000 in a single year. Under the new framework, which Samsung workers approved last week, the company’s semiconductor division will allocate a portion of its operating income, about 10.5% in stock-based awards plus an additional cash component, to a bonus pool. 

The move shows that the biggest winners from the AI boom face intensifying demands to spread the wealth. Nvidia’s key manufacturing ally, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), has made its own gestures on compensation to reassure employees that record AI profits are flowing to them too, not just shareholders, per Bloomberg.

TSMC Chief Executive C.C. Wei held a companywide town hall last week, telling employees that payouts under their incentive plan are set to rise faster this year than they did a year ago. Wei informed staff that they will see an average increase of more than 30% in their payouts this year. 

Huang said he has ‘created more billionaires’ than any other CEO

Meanwhile, at Nvidia, Huang has a reputation for creating billionaires. Last year, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index showed that two of the company’s top executives became billionaires as Nvidia’s share price climbed about 63% in a year. 

Last year, Huang said on the All-In podcast that he had “created more billionaires” on his management team than any other CEO in the world. 

“Don’t feel sad for anybody at my layer,” he said. “My layer is doing just fine.”

He added that he reviews the compensation of every single employee at the company and personally signs off on pay. 

“I sort through all 42,000 employees,” Huang said on the podcast.

Huang added that AI causing job loss is ‘complete nonsense’

Huang said at the event in Taipei earlier this week that job loss concerns due to AI are “complete nonsense.” He pointed out that AI is actually increasing demand for software engineers, noting that companies are hiring more of them to build and run new AI systems. Huang framed AI as a powerful productivity tool, stating that if a software developer can generate economic value with AI, businesses will want to employ more such workers, not cut them.