Nvidia CEO Reviews Salaries Of All 42,000 Employees Every Month. Here's Why It Works

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says he reviews the salaries of all 42,000 employees every month, a practice he calls central to his management style.

"I review everybody's compensation, up to this day, at the end of every cycle," Mr Huang said on the 'All-In Podcast', explaining that he uses machine learning tools and other technologies to analyse monthly pay data before making adjustments.

"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," he said.

"If you take care of people, everything else takes care of itself," he said, in response to talk of a "hidden reserve" of stock options for top performers.

Mr Huang said this approach has helped retain top leadership.

"I have created more billionaires on my management team than any other CEO in the world. They're doing just fine. Don't feel sad for anybody at my layer," he said.

Last year, Mr Huang entered Forbes' list of the world's top 10 richest people, and this year he topped Fortune's list of the world's 100 Most Powerful People in Business. He said that his focus remains on rewarding employees at all levels.

Mr Huang also spoke of the value of small, well-funded AI teams, citing OpenAI and China's DeepSeek as examples.

"If you're willing to pay, say, $20 billion, $30 billion to buy a startup with 150 AI researchers, why wouldn't you pay one?" he said, adding that such teams can "create wonders" with the right resources.

The remarks come as Nvidia becomes the first publicly traded company to cross a $4 trillion market capitalisation, overtaking Microsoft and Apple. The milestone, driven by surging demand for its AI chips that power models like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Meta LLaMA, follows a meteoric rise in valuation from $1 trillion in June 2023 to $4 trillion in just over a year.

Nvidia's stock is up 22% in 2025 after a 239% surge in 2024. The company reported $44.1 billion in Q1 FY26 revenue and expects around $45 billion in Q2. Analysts hail it as the "poster child of the AI revolution," with its next-generation "Rubin" chips slated for 2026, even as US and EU regulators scrutinise its dominance in AI hardware.