At SIGGRAPH 2024, Nvidia Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang shared a humorous insight into the long road to success, joking that he might have followed Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg's early college-dropout approach if he had known how long building a tech empire would take.
CEOs Reflect On Decades Of Innovation
During a wide-ranging discussion on the future of generative AI, Zuckerberg praised Huang for his role in powering the AI revolution.
"There is a lot of new stuff to build," Zuckerberg said. "Even if the progress on the foundation models kind of stopped now, which I don’t think it will, I think we’d have like five years of product innovation for the industry to basically figure out how to most effectively use all the stuff that’s gotten built so far."
He then added, "It's all you—you kind of made this happen."
Huang responded with a lighthearted, "Why thank you… CEOs, we're delicate flowers," implying — with humor — that even powerful executives need a little appreciation sometimes.
Playful Banter About Aging And Success
The conversation quickly turned humorous as the tech leaders poked fun at each other's appearances. "We're pretty grizzled at this point. I think we're the two longest-standing founders in the industry," Zuckerberg said. Huang agreed, noting, "It's true."
The two compared hairlines and styles, with Zuckerberg quipping about his curls and Huang remarking on his gray hair.
They laughed about the decades it took to build their companies. Huang admitted, "If I had known it was going to take so long to succeed… I would've dropped out of college just like you," to get a head start.
Zuckerberg then remarked about the difference in their personalities, while Huang teased that Zuckerberg had a 12-year head start, to which Zuckerberg replied, "You're doing pretty well."
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From $200 Startup To $5 Trillion Giant
On his 30th birthday in 1993, Huang founded Nvidia with the assistance of a lawyer, using just $200 in his pocket to secure a 20% stake.
He then invited his co-founders, Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem, to join, each investing $200 for their own 20% stakes. Nvidia officially launched on April 5, 1993, with the mission of advancing 3D graphics for gaming and multimedia.
A pivotal moment arrived in 1999 with the introduction of the GPU (graphics processing unit), a revolutionary innovation that reshaped the computing industry.
By May 2023, Nvidia's market capitalization had topped $1 trillion, and within the following year, it surged past $2 trillion and $3 trillion.
In October 2025, Nvidia made history as the first company ever to achieve a $5 trillion market valuation. At the time of writing, it has a market cap of $4.74 trillion.
From Dorm Room Startup To $1.6 Trillion Giant
Zuckerberg launched Facebook from his dorm room in 2004. His father, Edward Zuckerberg, offered to invest in a McDonald's franchise for his son before the Meta CEO decided to attend Harvard University.
According to Zuckerberg's sister, Randi, their father gave Mark and each of his three sisters the choice to either pursue college or manage a franchise. The tech mogul chose Harvard but eventually dropped out in 2005 to focus on Facebook.
Today, his company, Meta, boasts a market capitalization of $1.60 trillion.
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