Andrew Sharp: ‘Jensen Huang Was Always Going to Lose’

Andrew Sharp, in an excellent column at Sharp Text: I have a variety of thoughts after spending the past several days reading and recording podcasts about these (figurative and literal) affairs, but let me express one unpopular sentiment at the outset: what happened to Jensen Huang this week is tragic and depressing. I have a disease that makes me sympathetic to almost anyone who ends up on the wrong end of viral outrage and panic, and unfortunately it’s flaring up again. Huang is one of the greatest CEOs in American history. He’s still hyper competent, he’s been incredibly important to the growth of the AI ecosystem, and frankly, he’s among the most sane of the contemporary tech leaders we have on offer. His fall from grace has been not only stunning but seemingly coordinated. It is sad. But it’s also funny. Many tragedies are also hilarious. (That’s a key to Shakespeare’s enduring fame — his tragedies had funny scenes and his comedies had painful themes.) But I think it’s now a very open question whether Jensen Huang was even a vaguely responsible CEO, let alone “one of the greatest CEOs in American history”. What’s undisputed is that he’s one of the greatest technical innovators in history. Nvidia technology is world-beating in several regards. But that doesn’t make him a great CEO. If Nvidia falls apart because he — by his own admission — rejected the notion of succession planning and structured the company with no hierarchy other than himself at the center, that’s an abject failure. Ignoring the fact that he himself knew the risks he was taking with his sexual escapades, he could have been hit by a bus on any given day. The leadership structure Huang cultivated is like being the sole breadwinner in a family and not having a life insurance policy. If that breadwinner dies in an accident and leaves their family destitute, no one’s going to call them “one of the greatest parents in history”. Maybe it’ll all work out for Nvidia though. We don’t know yet. Only time will tell. But I don’t think it looks good at the moment. If I owned Nvidia stock I’d sell it all right now. The above doesn’t even touch upon my belief that Nvidia’s meteoric rise to the top market cap in the world was fueled — to some extent — by a circular financing racket. If my side of that argument is ultimately proven correct — that the AI bubble is essentially an elaborate, complex Ponzi scheme — Huang’s plaque in the CEO Hall of Fame will go in the Infamy Wing alongside Enron’s Jeffrey Skilling, Elizabeth Holmes, and Sam Bankman-Fried. Maybe I’m all wet about that. But I’d say it’s at least an open question at the moment. Sharp, nearing his conclusion: Huang repeatedly belittled those people with both his rhetoric and his company’s behavior, and indeed, he questioned the patriotism of anyone who dared to object. In so doing, he was waging war with not only large swaths of the U.S. security apparatus, but also the realities of Xi Jinping’s China that would inevitably make it impossible to sustain his position without looking naive, selfish, and unforgivably reckless. Read the whole thing, and Sharp ends up making the case himself that Huang, ultimately, was a terrible CEO, not a great one.  ★