Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is telling employees to rely on artificial intelligence as much as possible and to stop worrying that doing so will automate their jobs.
Speaking at an all-hands meeting last Thursday, a day after the chipmaker reported another fourth consecutive quarter of record results, Huang sharply responded to reports that some managers within the company were pushing their teams to reduce their use of AI. business insiderI heard the meeting.
“My understanding is that Nvidia has executives who are directing their employees to reduce their use of AI,” Huang said. “Are you sane?”
“We want to automate with artificial intelligence any task that can be automated with artificial intelligence,” he added. “I promise, you’ll have work to do.”
Huang told staff that NVIDIA’s own software engineers use the AI coding assistant Cursor, and urged employees to continue relying on AI tools even when they fall short. If AI doesn’t yet work for a particular task, employees should “use AI until it does” and “step right in and help improve it because we have the power to do so,” he said.
Silicon Valley is leaning towards AI
Nvidia is not alone in this strategy of using AI to build AI. Microsoft told employees in June that using AI was “no longer an option” and was incorporating tools like GitHub Copilot into its internal workflows, while Meta plans to incorporate employee use of AI into performance reviews. Google also told its engineers in June to start using its own Gemini AI for coding, and Amazon employees actually asked the company if they could adopt Cursor for coding purposes as well.
But internally at Nvidia, Huang made it clear to employees that AI would support them, not replace them. He pointed to the company’s workforce growth, noting that while Nvidia hired “several thousand people” in the most recent quarter, it is “probably still about 10,000 employees short.” Nvidia is also opening new offices in the United States and in Asia, including Shanghai and Taipei.
Focus on Nvidia
Of course, there’s been a lot of talk recently about the AI bubble, and Huang acknowledged that he’s had these discussions with his employees. He told employees that “the market didn’t appreciate” NVIDIA’s “incredible” quarter. The stock initially soared after delivering record-breaking profits and raising its outlook for the next quarter, but fell the next day as investors once again questioned how long the AI spending boom would last.
“If you deliver a bad quarter, that’s a sign of an AI bubble. If you deliver a great quarter, you’re fueling the AI bubble,” Huang said, adding that NVIDIA is in a “no-win” scenario. “If we had a bad quarter, if we were by the slightest margin, if we looked even a little squeamish, the whole world would have come crashing down.”
Externally, some prominent investors are questioning whether Nvidia’s profits and widespread AI build-out are sustainable. Michael Burry, known for “The Big Short,” is openly skeptical of the AI boom and attacks Nvidia. In his first post about Substack, he drew parallels between Nvidia and Cisco’s roles in the dot-com boom and bust of the late 90s. “Companies are allowed to innovate to death, and more companies spring up to do the same thing. Sometimes the new companies are the same companies on the pivot,” he wrote.
Regarding this story, luck We used generative AI to help with the first draft. Editors verified the accuracy of the information before publication.
