Jensen Huang reveals two CEOs told him NVIDIA could never cross $1B and $25B — it just hit $4 trillion. "I still remember the first time we crossed a billion dollars," Huang says. "I was reminded of a CEO who told me, 'Jensen, it's theoretically impossible for a fabless semiconductor company to exceed a billion dollars.'" "And then somebody told me, 'You'll never be more than $25 billion because of some other company.'" Both peers were wrong. The miss was generational: - $1B ceiling, missed by 4,000x - $25B ceiling, missed by 160x - Combined error: trillions of dollars Then Huang named what they got wrong: "Those aren't first-principled thinking." "The simple way to think about it is what is it that we make and how large is the opportunity that we can create?" Huang asked a different question. Not what's the market today. But what could NVIDIA create that didn't exist yet? That's the calculation that builds new markets instead of dividing up old ones. The ceiling-setters were stuck inside the existing market. Huang was busy building the next one. A ceiling assumes the room. He was building the room. P.S. I made a playbook breaking down 100+ most powerful decision making mental models used by history's greatest thinkers. 5,000+ downloads. 113 five-star reviews. Grab a free copy here: If you're new here, follow @GeniusGTX for content on the greatest minds in economics, psychology, and history. — Jensen Huang ( @nvidia ), NVIDIA CEO, on Lex Fridman's ( @lexfridman ) podcast