Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who lives by the phrase ’30 days from going out of business,’ says he is ‘jealous’ of the young founders

Jensen Huang has spent 33 years telling himself that Nvidia is about a month away from collapse. The phrase has outlasted the botched Sega contract that nearly finished the company in 1996, the layoffs that followed it, and the AI boom that has since pushed Nvidia’s market value to roughly $4.7 trillion. None of that paranoia, it turns out, extends to other people.

Speaking at Y Combinator’s Startup School 2026 this week, in conversation with YC chief executive Garry Tan, the 63-year-old Nvidia CEO told the room that this is the single greatest time in history to start a company.