If you think being CEO of a $4.4 trillion tech giant sounds glamorous, Nvidia Corp. (NVDA) chief Jensen Huang has some news for you: it's mostly suffering.

The Unsexy Truth About Running a Trillion-Dollar Company

Speaking at the University of Cambridge earlier this month—where he picked up the 2025 Professor Stephen Hawking Fellowship Award—Huang gave students a reality check about what leadership actually looks like when you're running one of the world's most valuable companies.

"Most people think that it's about leading and being in command and being on top," he told the audience. "None of that is true. You're in service of the company."

According to Huang, the job is fundamentally about creating conditions for other people to succeed, which tends to involve making brutal decisions during incredibly difficult moments. He described the role as "mostly about pain and suffering," along with "sacrifice" and "determination." Not exactly the power fantasy most people imagine.

How Huang Became CEO: His Co-Founders Didn't Want It

The origin story is appropriately humble. Nvidia started in 1993 in a Denny's booth with no business plan and three founders who had zero leadership experience between them.

When students asked why Huang—rather than his co-founders Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem—ended up as CEO, his answer was refreshingly blunt: "They didn't want the job."

Looking back, Huang admitted he could have been smarter about it. "To be CEO is a lifetime of sacrifice," he reflected. In other words, his co-founders might have understood something he didn't fully grasp at the time.

An Immigrant Childhood That Built Resilience

Huang credits his upbringing for preparing him to handle the pressures that come with the territory. His family immigrated to the United States with very little, and those early years were defined by challenge, effort, and uncertainty.

That kind of struggle—where you earn everything and take nothing for granted—turned out to be excellent training for running a company, he said.

There's another element too. Huang's mother constantly told him he was "special," a belief that apparently stuck. "[My mother] left me with an impression that nothing could be that hard… and people have seen me adapt," he explained.

It's a straightforward formula: if your childhood involved real hardship, the difficulties of corporate leadership might not feel quite as overwhelming. Or at least, you've already developed the muscle memory for pushing through.

Nvidia's Next Big Earnings Test

All this introspection comes as Nvidia prepares to report its third-quarter earnings on Wednesday after the closing bell. The company has become a critical barometer for both the broader market and the tech sector specifically.

Wall Street is expecting revenue of $54.84 billion for the quarter, which would represent a massive jump from the $35.08 billion Nvidia posted during the same period last year.

The company has now beaten revenue expectations for 12 consecutive quarters. Its own guidance for the third quarter ranged between $52.92 billion and $55.08 billion, so consensus estimates fall comfortably within that window.

For context, Nvidia ranks in the 98th percentile for Growth and 92nd percentile for Quality compared to industry peers, which helps explain why the stock continues to command such intense investor attention.

So while Huang talks about sacrifice and suffering, the results suggest that whatever pain he's enduring is translating into some pretty spectacular business outcomes. Whether that makes the job worth it is a question only he can answer—but at least his mother thinks he's special.