Robert Galbraith/Reuters
- Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang writes hundreds of emails a day to staff, per The New Yorker.
- Execs at the chip giant compare Huang's curt emails to haiku and ransom notes.
- One employee says the way the CEO communicates is like "sticking your finger in the electric socket."
Getting to inbox zero may be a tough feat if you work at Nvidia — especially if important work emails from CEO Jensen Huang read like poetry or even a ransom note.
In an interview with The New Yorker, the CEO and cofounder of Nvidia, the company behind GPUs, offered a glimpse into how he communicates with his workers. The company employs more than 26,000 workers worldwide, according to Fortune.
Bombarding his staff with emails appears to be Huang's preferred mode of communication.
Huang reportedly talks to his staff by sending hundreds of emails to them every day, according to The New Yorker.
The CEO's email style appears to be distinct. Huang's emails tend to be only a few words long, The New Yorker reported. In fact, one executive said Huang's emails resemble the Japanese poetry style haiku; another executive compared them to ransom notes.
While it's not clear what exactly Huang writes in his emails — Nvidia declined to comment when Business Insider pressed the company on the matter — there appear to be a few phrases that the CEO likes to use.
For scheduling purposes, Huang tells his employees to work at "the speed of light," which means they should work quickly and prioritize their to-do list based on which tasks are fastest to complete, according to the magazine. It says he also encourages staff to work on the "zero-billion dollar market," referring to building out exploratory products that may not have any real customers and competitors.
For some employees, the way Huang speaks to them may come off as harsh. One employee told The New Yorker that interacting with the CEO is "kind of like sticking your finger in the electric socket."
Huang admits that his brute tone may be unintentional.
"It's really about what's going on in my brain versus what's coming out of my mouth," he told the New Yorker. "When the mismatch is great, then it comes out as anger."
The new revelations about Huang's workplace etiquette come as Nvidia plays an increasingly important role in powering the AI revolution. Companies are racing to get their hands on Nvidia's GPU chips, which businesses can use to train and deploy their own AI models. That's one reason Nvidia's stock has climbed more than 200% in the past year.
With a net worth $42.6 billion, Huang is ranked the 28th-richest person in the world as of November 29, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
In other words, Huang must be doing something right.